I am a visitor to the celebration, and this year we could not have scored a better experience. Orange County represents the third-largest Asian population in California and the United States.

Some people enjoy bar crawls; I enjoy celebration crawls.

We first made our way to Tet Carnival in Fountain Valley to ring in the New Year. There was great tasting of yummy Vietnamese food and art.

After the carnival we still had a hankering for Vietnamese coffee, so we made our way to a popular spot nearby open until midnight, September.

Are you ever driving and see something in the distance that draws you to more fun? Well, that was our night.

After our coffee run, we saw big fireworks in the distance and decided to follow them.

We made our way to Anaheim, home of Hue Quang Buddhist Temple. This was our first visit, and it did not disappoint. We had a personal, up-close fireworks-watching experience … some might call illegal, but it was so fun! It legitimately felt like we weren’t in the United States.

Our walk through the temple was absolutely fascinating. We got to pick our fortunes for the year by using Google Lens to figure out what’s in store for us.

Custom to those who grew up with the custom but an absolute novelty to us.

There was also a full-on market with so much food to choose from.

Night market to go with your Lunar Year Celebration at the Hue Quang Buddhist Temple.

We also walked into the temple to observe people doing their offerings for the year to come and a lot more we didn’t fully understand.

One of the coolest Buddhist temples in OC.

— Maria Angeles, account executive