Despite the heavy rain on Wednesday morning, crowds patiently queued up to buy mooncakes at a shop in Hanoi’s Thuy Khue Street.
Hundreds of people stood in long queues to wait their turn during the rain, with bikes parked on the pavement.
Due to surging demand as the Mid-Autumn Festival nears, the shop hired more staff to help and they have had to work at full capacity.
Vu Hoa Quang from Tay Ho District bought 30 boxes of mooncakes at over VND5 million after queuing up for over an hour. He said that he bought them for his family and colleagues who all love the special taste of the cakes made by this bakery.
Another customer, Pham Thi Ha, said that she bought the cakes every Full Moon Festival and did not mind waiting. "Many people, including me, still love the traditional methods used by local bakeries instead of the luxury cakes from big manufacturers," she said. "These bakeries don't advertise or have fancy boxes, yet people have been seen queuing up for hours in the street for them."
As the bakery announced that they had run out of cakes, customers had to wait some more hours for a new batch.
In Haiphong City, long queues of customers can also seen from early morning until late at night to buy mooncakes at a bakery on Cau Dat Street.
A customer, Nguyen Phuong Hoa, said that this was a common scene every year. "We want to enjoy their traditional mooncake on the Full Moon Festival and give them to our loved ones as presents," Hoa said. "The cakes are really more to my taste and I think they preserve the feeling of old times."
Meanwhile, some other mooncake shops in the city attracted just a few customers.
Moon cakes are traditionally eaten during the Full Moon Festival. The festival, held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar which falls on September 29 this year, is for moon-watching and especially, the celebration of children.
