Road Trip...Vietnam Style

Last Saturday, we got out of Hanoi for a trip to a sacred site for Buddhists.  The Perfume Pagoda.  In order to get there we had to take a motorbike, bus and these lovely metal/plastic boats. The bus ride was two hours and the boat ride was an hour.  These boats were rowed by ladies.  Speculations were made in the boat as to why the men weren't rowing.  A general consensus was the men were drinking Bia Hoi leaving the hard work up to the ladies.  Par for the course here in Vietnam.  On the river and out of the noise of Hanoi was lovely.  Here are some scenes:

After about an hour and 50 boat hawkers later, we arrived at the first pagoda.  Here we learned the difference between pagodas and temples.  What is the difference you ask?  Pagodas are reserved for worshiping Buddha and temples are for all other forms of worship such as ancestor worship and asking for non-vegetarian foods.  At this point, we were still about an hour walk from the Perfume Pagoda.  We had two options, walk up the stairs and run the gauntlet of persistent hawkers or take the gondola up and skip most of the hawkers.  Jeff and I chose the gondola for a few reasons: 1. It was way too hot to walk for an hour up hill. (for us at least)  2. There was nothing to see during the walk up the hill except shanty booths trying to sell you lucky incense.

Anyway, we took the scenic gondola ride up. It was a gondola ride.  Terrified me and the little girl who was riding with us.  Luckily she screamed louder than me.

It was beautiful but I can see why there were so many bad reviews on www.tripadvisor.com.  I cannot imagine coming during Tet. During the months of January-April millions of people are clamoring up this mountain.  I can only imagine how terrible it would be.  I know many tourists visited and posted to Trip Advisor's website because of their bad experience.  Also, it is a pretty involved trip.  If you were in Hanoi for a week, I wouldn't recommend visiting the Perfume Pagoda.  If you have a month or more to spend in northern Vietnam, then see the Perfume Pagoda.  If  you are backpacking through Vietnam, skip it.  Luckily for us, we moved here and really enjoyed our time at the Perfume Pagoda.
-Janet

 

The Huong Tich cave and our ultimate destination on this expedition.