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December’s “Christmas Around The World” Photo Contest Winner: A Ho Chi Minh City Santa Hat | The Expeditioner Travel Site

December’s “Christmas Around The World” Photo Contest Winner: A Ho Chi Minh City Santa Hat

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

It never ceases to amaze us when two people are on the same page, let alone 8 million. We learned from our December photo contest at our Flickr group, that this is exactly the case every December in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Our Christmas-themed contest winner comes from AMASC and is titled “Balloon Gazing.” She is the one that schooled us on the city’s Christmas custom:

During December, Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon (call it what you will), is home to the largest collection of people wearing Santa hats in the world.  Everyone does it, taxi drivers, waiters, random adults, school kids but especially children. From the beginning of December the Christmas decorations go up and the main occupation of this city of 8 million is to dress your child like Santa and grab a few hundred images of them in front of the decorations, the hawkers and the other little Santas.

We really gravitated to this photo because, to us, it really grabs the essence of traveling during the holidays. Matt agrees: “I think nothing is cooler when traveling than seeing those incongruous images, like Christmas decorations in a hot climate in Southeast Asia.”

For more images from SE Asia, holiday oriented or not, head over to her photostream or blog full of spectacular shots. It may just plant a seed in your mind to spend next year’s holiday void of snow. I know I’m considering it. Chúc M?ng Giáng Sinh everyone — Merry Christmas.

With all this winter stuff going on, we thought we’d take a little break from it all and dream of those island getaways, bungalows, drinks served with umbrellas and inside some kind of fruit you’ve never seen before. January’s theme is “Island Vibes.”So relive those beachside massages all over again while you upload your island getaway shots to our contest thread.

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