This Saturday was some Ancient King’s birthday and all of Vietnam closed. Since we just moved to a new house, were without internet, and since it had been a while since we had embarked on an adventure of any kind, George and I figured it was time to get out of the house and have a little adventure. George suggested the Perfume Pagoda, which is about two hours ride from Hanoi, the center of Buddhism in Vietnam and is a very cool place for a day trip.
We ventured out at about 8:00am and immediately hit a ton of traffic. Once we were out of the city things got better, but not really. You see instead of a traffic jam, which just causes a headache, we had to deal with truck drivers which can cause a hell of a lot more than that. Truck drivers in Vietnam are insane, lanes mean nothing to them. So they go speeding along, while hopped up on cheap homemade speed I might add, and you have to stay the hell out of their way, which means being watchful for these crazy bastards every second of the drive. We even saw a rice truck, which had hit a motorbike, spun out and flipped over into, of all things, a rice field. It wasn’t a pretty sight. We also passed a bunch of horse and water buffalo carts.
Anyway, the Perfume Pagoda works like this (and for the record the whole thing reminded me of that futurama when Bender became god and Frey had to go to that temple to find him, and sorry for those who don’t get the reference because I am going to bring it up a lot); you go to this little town along a river where there are about a million rowboats. Then you find someone who will rent you out a rowboat and rowboat guy, and buy tickets for the pagoda. Then you get into the rowboat and the rowboat guy (our rowboat guy was missing a tooth *insert theme from “Deliverance” here*) rows you out to this little island, or something. It takes about an hour but it is very pretty and is surrounded by mountains. It was also great to be on the water again, since I am after all, a pirate. Since that day was a holiday there were a TON of other people going too, almost all of whom were Vietnamese, some of the rowboats were packed so full I was sure they would sink. Anyway once you get there you are bombarded with people selling hot dogs and dog meat among other things. George says they usually are not there but since there were to be so many tourists today, they all came out of the woodwork.
The Perfume Pagoda itself is a cave on top of a mountain, but there are about four other temples on the way up, the most impressive of which is called “Heaven’s Kitchen” which features warrior Buddha’s, many handed Buddha’s and lot’s of Animal Statues. The cool thing about temples is the way they use Animals, there is almost always one Animal sculpture or painting in a temple, and Buddha help you if you actually kill an animal, even an ant in the temple, someone is libel to freak out.
After taking some pictures with the animals, we continued our journey up the mountain. There are two ways to go up the mountain, you can walk… or take the brand new Danish made cable car (Again I thought of futurama and the rickety bridge that turned into a moving walkway). We chose to walk up and take the cable car down. Because this was the holiday, there were booths the up the mountain selling everything you can possibly imagine, including snake wine (literally rice wine with a snake in it), a toy spiderman on a skateboard, piggy banks and my personal favorite, toy guns. Because you know all of those things promote traditional Buddhist values… and also keep kids content while their parents visit a boring temple. There was also trash all over the place, again adhering to strict Buddhist principles in what is basically Vietnam’s Vatican City.
When we got to the top, George and his wife stopped at some Cafe, while I continued on to the Pagoda. George has seen it about 15 times and didn’t want to make the walk down, which is treacherous, again reminding me of futurama. The Pagoda was certainly interesting… it is a huge cave with little alters all over the place. Because I am not Buddhist and don’t know any of the little things you are supposed to do I just sorta walked around and looked at stuff, which again reminded me of Frey in the futurama episode burping as he blew past the sherpa who was “not holy enough to enter” Like I said it was interesting, especially seeing the neons they had set up behind some of the statues. I would like to see what would happen if the Vatican installed a neon cross in St Peter’s.
After I came out it was time to begin our journey home, which we did by cable car. When we got to the bottom we noticed something we had seen on the way up, LEMURS! Or at least that was what they looked like, we had no idea what they were… but George wanted to buy one. George has always been an animal lover, and likes to keep weird pets (he once had a monkey). So it was only natural with a new house that he want to buy a pet for it. So he started to bargain. They started at 700,000 or about $36 (the exchange rate is insane) and George talked them down to 250,000 or around $15. I named him Odysseus as we bought him on our journey home.
We then ate at what George claims is the only decent restaurant on the mountain and showed off our new pet. The Vietnamese call him a coo-lee, which apparently is also a racial slur for a Chinese person and a derogatory name for a porter. We then took the rowboat back to our motorbikes. The drive home was even scarier than the mountain driving, because half of it was in the dark with the dump trucks, and their methed out drivers, flying at us at 50 mph on a narrow road. But we did get back in one piece.
Afterward:
As far as the pagoda trip is concerned, it was quite the little adventure, it was very pretty and the rowboat ride and mountain climb made it much more of a “pilgrimage” than getting on the Roman metro and seeing the Vatican (which I have also been to and is indeed very beautiful). Still, I don’t think the spiderman vendors were necessary… also while it is quite easy to find a Vatican City flag right outside Vatican City, I didn’t see a single booth selling Buddhist flags, very disappointing… Though you can’t buy exotic animals in Rome.
We later found out that our pet is a Slow Loris, which is listed as a “Vulnerable” species in Vietnam. Apparently, in addition to it’s eyes being used for traditional medicine, it is also put into rice wine and served to pregnant women to ease the pain childbirth, which as we all know, most reputable medical professionals would agree with. George’s wife also says that their meat is very tasty… so for those of you that have a problem with this we most likely saved him from a very bad fate indeed. On that note, apparently Japanese women find these things to be very fashionable pets and will pay up to $4,500 for them, so if anyone knows any reliable Japanese smugglers, please let me know.
