Michael & Yuhui – Our Life Journey

2006-11-30 – Day 2- Vietnam – Perfume Pagoda

The morning started off a little slow since the travel agent had made a mix up and picked me from the hotel lobby around 8am. We made up quite an international bunch (2 Swiss,  2 Canadians, 1 Londoner, 3 from Hoh Chi Minh City and me from Singapore )

The journey started from Hanoi city south-west wards towards Chua Huong (Perfume Pagoda). After cross farmlands and small towns, we reached Ben Duc (Pier Duc). According to this site :

Chua Huong (Perfume pagoda) is located in Huong son (Perfume mountain) 70 km southwest of Hanoi. Chua Huong is not one temple but a cluster of temples and shrines in the general vicinity of Huong son. The pagoda(s) are located in My Duc hamlet in the province of Ha Tay. According to the book, Huong Son Thien Tru Pha, Huong Tich temple was built during the reign of Le Chinh Hoa (1680-1705), by a monk who happened on the site on his way to search for enlightenment. Other shrines and temples were later built in this area to take advantage of the beautiful scenery in this area.
Perfume pagoda has a long history in Vietnamese literature. This temple, its name, has been a theme of many songs, topic of poetry, used in literary works as well as backdrops for paintings. The uniqueness of Huong Son is that the mountains, river and forest appears like an oasis for buddhists in the middle of the great plains of northern Vietnam. This location truly incorporates all the elements of beauty that is often used in Eastern philosophy and arts.

Sounds real interesting doesn’t it? We got off at Ben Duc and proceeded towards Yen Vi river where there were scores of red metal hulled rowboats waiting to row us towards Chua Huong (I later found out that what we saw was just a fraction of the boats since it was off peak season). I got on board one of the boats with our tour guide for the day and Steve from London. On the 1 hour journey, the lady behind us tirelessly rowed us upstream (which I found amazing). I enjoyed the cool calm breeze and chatted with Steve. Curious enough, I found out he was also in IT and taking a good long break (3 months!) with intentions of heading to Australia to look for employment. Really quite a different culture from us Singaporeans who work hard and only have short breaks The boat ride breezed by and soon we had reached the foot of Chua Huong. It was a good thing that we were there on a weekday and also not during the peak period of February and March.

After a brisk short walk, we were told that a cable car had been built a year ago and those who didn’t want to climb up could take the cable car for 15000 dong. Well, since the climb was supposed to be only an hour, 5 of us decided to get some exercise and proceeded to climb up the steps towards Huong Tich Grotto. It was actually pretty good “stair-master” exercise since most of the path consisted of steps of rocks.

After about an hour’s cimb, we reached Huong Tich grotto. There’s 120 steps down into grotto with the words “Heaven’s Gate” (path to heaven) and “Hell’s Gate” (descend to hell) at the entrance. As I ventured into the cave, I noticed the shrine that was place inside and also many colourful stalagmites and stalactites. Our tour guide told us that we could take the cable car down again but since we were all in the walking mood, we decided to walk back the way we came.

This time round it seemed a little more difficult since going down the slippery rocks required a little more concentration. We took slightly longer than the climb up but we finally reached the foot of the mountain where we were supposed to have lunch.

After a “zhi cha” style lunch and enjoyed a nice cool Bia Ha Noi, our tour guide led us to Thien Tru (Heavenly Kitchen) Temple.

The journey back was downstream but still took our rower an hour to get back (again, strong arms they have here!). Caught sight of a fisherman using electricity to shock the fishes .. a pretty novel method that they practiced. We boarded into our mini-bus at Ben Duc and soon was on the highway back to Hanoi. At one of the stops, I caught sight of roasted dog… was pretty weird to see a dog roasted but apparently its a delicacy around this area. Suddenly made sense why I had seen simlar breeds of dogs around but all didn’t seem very old!

Reaching Sunway Hanoi, Yh informed me that their hosts had included me in the dinner plans so I could join in a delicious meal at Cha Ca La Vong (14 Cha Ca Str. Tel 8.253 929). Cha Ca, is a special dish first made by the family Doan in Hanoi. It was a pretty interesting dish since the only course was a generous serving of fried fish, vegetables and rice noodles. The helpers continuously topped up with servings of fish or vegetables as soon as we cleared the frying pan. Definitely recommended as we downed Bia Ha Noi with the food.. simply delicious!

After dinner, it seemed like a good idea to walk off all the food so we headed to Little Hanoi (I believe its 4 streets that form it … Hang Dao, Hang Ngang, Hang Duong and Dong Xuan). We walked around a little and also found a local snack that seemed like a Subway sandwich.

After a little confusion since we couldn’t communicate properly (we thought it was 70000 dong when it was only 7000 dong!), we headed towards Dong Xuan night market. It looked a little like the pasar malam that we have in Singapore and also had some food stalls set up. From here, we took a cab back to the hotel and was time to call it a night.