Bananas are an essential fruit in the Tet fruit tray, so as Tet approaches, the price of green bananas becomes more expensive, increasing several times compared to normal days.
Ms. Nguyen Thi Giang, a banana seller at Quang Trung Market, Vinh City, said that as Tet approaches, the price of bananas increases, up to 5-6 times higher than normal days. “The price of bananas ranges from 100,000 – 150,000 VND/bunch. The most expensive are individual bananas (15, 17, 19), which have uniform and beautiful fruits with prices starting from 300,000 VND. From the 25th of the lunar month, banana prices start to rise, and there are also many buyers. I sell based on the bunch, the bunch with beautiful fruits and individual bananas have higher prices, and the bunch with lower quality has lower prices,” Giang said.
The sellers explained that individual bananas are expensive because they are rare, and the number of individual bananas in a bunch is not many. Moreover, according to folk beliefs, a bunch with an odd number of fruits symbolizes luck.
The bunches with odd numbers of fruits are marked so that buyers can easily choose. Some bunches are reserved for regular customers.
People are choosing green bananas for the Tet fruit tray on the morning of February 8th.
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After going back and forth between two nearby markets, Ms. Tran Thi Lien (residing in Hung Binh Ward, Vinh City) finally bought a bunch of 17 bananas for 300,000 VND. According to her, beautiful bananas not only need to be ripe, flawless, but also have intact flowers at the top of the fruits and have an odd number of fruits.
Sellers count the fruits to calculate the money.
According to the sellers, the price of each bunch of bananas also depends on the color, size, odd/even number of fruits, intact flowers, and whether there are any “defects.” In the picture, a large number of people are busy buying green bananas for Tet.
