Late September in 2007 my wife and I were in Hoi An in Vietnam during the Chinese Lunar Festival.
 
One night we were looking for a place to eat, and as we were looking at the menu of a restaurant an Englishman who worked for a local scuba diving company came up to us and told us that the restaurant was very good. He also suggested we should go up stairs because there was going to be some festival celebrations, and we would get a good view.
 
From the balcony upstairs, we overlooked an intersection where large crowds were gathering.  After a short time, we could hear drums and gongs as gangs of about 20 young men dressed in parts of dragon costumes came into the intersection.
 
The dragons consisted of a smallish man dressed in decorative colourful trousers and T-shirt operating the head, which had a long train that made up the rest of the dragon’s body.  The man operating their head was lifted on to the shoulders of another man, who then was lifted onto the shoulders of another man, standing on a wooden platform, which was then lifted by about another 10 men into the air as the three-man tall dragon danced to the accompanying beating of drums and gongs.  It looked as though the gangs represented different neighbourhoods and they seemed to be competing with each other to do more spectacular displays.  It was joyously spectacular, and the atmosphere was fantastic. 
 
After the different gangs competed with each other in the middle of the intersection they moved along the streets in their groups, whilst people in the upper storeys of the buildings they passed, held out poles with money tied by string to the ends, to entice the dragons to reach up and get the money. 

 The dragons then would build their pyramids again, whilst dancing to the music, weaving their way through the nearby power lines to pull the money free of the poles. 

Other members of their gang with polls pushed the power lines aside to make enough room for the dragons to pass through. Some of the dragons had only one person in them and some (such as the one above) had two people in them.

It was the best time we had in Vietnam.  The people were so nice. The food was excellent and the entertainment couldn’t be beat.