Tran Phuong, who traveled from the West Lake area, opted to wait in line rather than deal with scalpers.

“Outside the ticket area, it was quite lively, with scalpers constantly offering tickets at higher than the listed price,” he said, adding that buying tickets wasn’t too difficult, but the heavy rain and narrow entrance limited the pace.

Predicting that the top-tier tickets were gone, Phuong settled for three VND400,000 tickets for him and his friends.