My aunt and uncle just so happened to have booked a holiday to Vietnam before I decided to teach English here. They had spent the past two weeks travelling up the East Coast from Ho Chi Minh and today they had a rest day in Hanoi, and so we were going on a trip to the Perfume Pagoda.
I stayed the night in a hostel in the Old Quarter, as we were leaving at the crack of dawn they next day.
I woke up constantly the whole night and got next to no sleep. Until you go travelling, you won’t understand the excitement of having a friendly face visit from back home. It’s like waiting for Santa Claus all over again…
I got ready and went down for breakfast to enjoy my free fruit salad. I then spent half an hour plucking up the courage to ask a girl if I could borrow her deodorant because I had forgotten mine. I then waited until she definitely wasn’t looking and asked another girl to borrow her toothpaste, which I had also forgotten!
At 7.40 am, after trying to ring my aunt Jane to check she was on the bus and getting no reply, I was rung by the travel agency and told that they would now be picking me up first, and then my aunt and uncle. This meant my aunt and uncle had been ready and waiting at the hotel at 7 am for no reason…. Typical Vietnamese organisation!
Eventually we made it onto the bus and I saved a seat for Jane and Phil, luckily at the front. I also then had to borrow travel sickness tablets. On the way there we stopped at a centre that sold hand made goods/ crafts made by people who had been disabled/ deformed as a direct result of the gas used by the Americans on the Vietnamese during the war (Agent Orange). All proceeds went to them. A local sales woman followed me round the shop showing me everything, which was highly annoying because I had already decided I was going to buy something, but wanted to look ALONE!!! In the end I bought a dish with little birds on it, that I can keep in my bedroom.
When we arrived we got a boat along the river which was beautiful, with a little local woman sat at the back, rowing for the entire time using just her feet. She must be so strong but looked weedy as anything! Jane was delighted that we had chairs with backs on, and not just planks of wood to sit on like the locals had.
After manoeuvring in and out of the boats with some difficulty, we then walked along the river, and witnessed hanging in the local shops whole dear, armadillos, rats and what I think were cats, hung up and ready to be eaten. Many of the dear had already been chopped up and so were just skeletons from the nose down to the stomach. Lovely.
Then we had to sit around for a long time waiting to go into the Pagoda, of course, with no explanation of what was going on. During this time a woman slipped on the boat, went straight into the water and had to be rescued, which wasn’t very reassuring!
One of the Vietnamese men offered us some popcorn (fried sweet corn), so Jane and I instantly decided to go and buy some. The salesman said “Two”, so I gave him a 5000 VND note, which he wouldn’t accept. We presumed this was because the note was too high and they couldn’t change it, so Jane then ran back over to Phil to get some smaller change. The Vietnamese thought that Jane running was absolutely hilarious. On her return they still wouldn’t accept the money and so I realised he meant 20,000 VND- a complete rip off! To confuse matters more, Jane then accidentally gave him 500,000 dong ($25 US) which he took with great delight, until I demanded it back! Eventually, we got the popcorn and had to run back to the tour, which had been ready to leave for 5 minutes. Oops.
The Pagoda was lovely. We wanted someone to take a picture of all three of us, and after the first man refused (we are not sure why) we approached a friendly looking Vietnamese woman. She then gave the camera to her husband and got into the photo with me, Jane and Phil, followed by all 20 members of the rest of her family. I was hysterical by this point, as we all posed together for the photo. Again, I would soon learn that this is a very common occurrence.
We got some free time to look around the stalls before lunch, where we were relieved to see that we didn’t have to sit and eat on the vast, long tables full of the Vietnamese people eating street food, but got our own private room. Lunch was good, except one of the Vietnamese women enthusiastically served me an extra, extra large serving of morning glory, which I think has put me off for life, as I had to force my way through it!
We then headed for the cable carts, after Jane warned our tour guide for the fourth time not to leave his i-phone on charge on the table! Well, this was an experience. You queued right up to the barrier, which was completely pointless because then everyone went through the barrier at the same time, so there was chaos trying to get on the cable cart. The Vietnamese DO NOT do queuing, and so at one point we had been pushed so far round the platform that there wasn’t enough room for the people to get out the cart before everyone was trying to get in! There was much pushing and shoving, and eventually Jane and I got in the cart, and I was still holding Phil’s hand, who was walking along the edge of the platform apologetically and trying to be polite! Eventually, we pulled him on, after some strong tugging from Jane!
At the top we went to see the cave, yes, the Perfume Pagoda is an area and its main attraction is a CAVE not a pagoda! There are three places of worship inside, one to pray for boys, one to pray for girls and the last to pray for wealth. There was a Vietnamese festival happening at the time, so the place was packed full of Vietnamese people, who were all inside the cave praying. We even saw some people pushing and shoving to get their hands underneath water which was dripping into the cave from the roof, a bit like the scene in Titanic where everyone is trying to get to the priest!
On the plus side, the Vietnamese festival meant we were the only Westerners in the entire place, which made it quite an authentic experience, and they had gone all out with the gifts you could buy to give to the dead, and had stalls all the way up the mountain. This meant that we were spared the sellers who apparently often follow you up the entire way!
The Vietnamese believe that you live on after death, somewhere else, and so make paper copies of everything that might need when dead. Jane told me that the tour guide told them a story of a woman who dreamt that her grandparents wanted to visit their her in Berlin, so she went and bought some paper clothes, shoes, a suitcase, money, a passport etc and left it as a gift, so the grandparents could get to Berlin… but was then mortified because she’d forgotten the paper visa for entry into Berlin!
On the way back we had to ensure the cable cart queue again and so Jane suggested that she went in the middle so she could determinedly drag both me and Phil onto the cable carts. Drag she did. There was a lot of pushing and shoving again, probably worse than the first time, but there was a guard who attempted to make the Vietnamese people move back. I got on and so did Jane but Phil got stuck again and so Jane literally launched him through the Vietnamese people and onto the cart, while Phil shouted “Sorry” countless times in a mortified manor! There were Vietnamese people flying in all directions as Phil was launched onto the cart. The Vietnamese people who were already sat in our cart thought this was hilarious and were wetting themselves laughing, re-enacting it with their hands using swishing motions. The other Vietnamese people had probably been knocked out!
The boat trip back was nice and relaxing, and we had many groups of Chinese/ Vietnamese trying to talk to us/ take photos as they passed in their own boats.
After the cable carts I was ripped off when paying to use the squat loo, I paid 5,000 VND and Jane only paid 3,000 VND! During her toilet trip, Jane became very disorientated and confused when her Iphone turned itself on whilst in her pocket and began playing “Meatloaf, Bat out of Hell”, while she was hovering over the squat toilet!
Jane and Phil reported major traffic jams and various broken down cars on the journey back, all of which I missed because I was fast asleep!
For dinner we went to a lovely restaurant, and took some touristy pictures, the waiter even took some for us from a few different positions! Dinner was again lovely, the music was, as usual, terrible AND even included a strange version of Auld Man Syne!
I said bye to Jane and Phil and got a lift back to my house in the suburbs with Tien, my xe om driver, riding side saddle all the way through the middle of town, feeling like a true pro!
