We get up at 7 for our first tour to the Perfume pagodas. Let me tell you with a hangover and spending the night in a damp room is no fun. The hotel people are really nice and friendly though even if there is damp all up and down the walls.
We stop at a small village after a 2 hour bus journey. The village is smelly muddy and dirty. We walk for 15 minutes after being hasseled on the bus (happens a lot more in vietnam than laos or thailand). We get to a canal type area with over 2000 boats. Then we split into groups of 4 per boats, its quite a laugh getting in them.
Brenda sits in front next to this japenese guy and I sit behind next to this lovely vietnamese gentlemen. He has been retired from an american company for 5 years and now has his own nickle platting business in Hochiminh City where he has 10 people working for him. He was actually the best guide ever telling us about the red rice flowers that are just at the end of season. I have to say this guy had the most infectious giggley laugh I have ever heard you couldn't help but smile as well.
The perfume pagoda has a three month season for tourists and buddhist rituals and this is the last month. The woman rowing the boat does one trip a month as their are 2000 boats they take it in turns then find other work to get an income.
They row very strangely here, facing the front and skulling the wrong way. Looks a lot harder so its a good thing she just does it once.
After an hours journey through amazing scnenery (viatnam is so beautiful) we get to our destination. We have passed through wild rice fields mountains and pagodas. Its called the perume pagoda not because of the a pagoda but the whole area has 20 pagodas all dotted around, some of which are three days hike. They are surrounded by mountains with the river passing through.
When we get to the shopping village at the boittom we are told there is an option of a 3k or 1k hike., We pick the 1k hike as we have to go over muddy very slippery rocks and lots of tourists have fallen or spoarined ankles. Easy choice really.
We get to the first pagoda, and one that hasn't been bombed for one reason or another, simply because its in a cave. Yes another cave with a collection of buddhas. The great thing however about this one is that the viatnamese buddha is a woman... yeah, that's right, for womens lib, about time.
The reason she is female is the vietnamese take the best bits in religion and adapt them, or get the translation slightly wrong, so in this case they thought the buddha was female and kept it. There's also a lot of harmony ying and yang type things going on.
Next we go to this beautiful pagoda, basically a temple, but more chinese in charchter than the thai. It was bombed by the french, and this is the reconstructure where we learn there are 4 sacred viatnamese animals, a unicorn, for courage (looks more like a chinese dragon), a turtle, for loing life and dragon and a phoenix, for beauty.
We walk round the pagoda, then have one of the best vietnamese lunches ever beef stir fry and noodles, tofu, spincah the lot (no dog, phew!).
Next, after another NBS (see Viantene bus journey) we get the boat back for another hour.
When we get back Brenda and I go for beers and buy a shed load of DVD's I get 13 with a case that holds 40 for $14. Not sure of the quality, but what the heck.
After a meal (yes burger time again as getting to the point of no more rice please) we got to the 9pm showing of the water puppet show. Thois was amazing a small theatre with a mock pagoda on the stage and a small lake at the bottom. The have these puppets that swim dance and tell stories in the water accompanied by a vietnamese local band playing traditional instruments. Was beautiful, I wasn't that keep oin the human puppets but the dragons, fish and other animals the way they moved was beautiful.
After another sikathew to the wrong hotel journey we get to the hotel again.