Vietnam pagoda festival in full swing
Vietnam pagoda festival in full swing
By John Rogers [10 pts ML]
PERFUME PAGODA, Vietnam (Reuter); For a few hours every Sunday at this time of year, the most crowded place in densely-populated Vietnam is a narrow hill path on a northern mountainside.
In their thousands, Buddhist pilgrims, daytrippers and villagers struggle for space on the path leading to Chua Huong, the Perfume Pagoda, a huge cavern containing sacred Buddhist shrines among the stalagmites and stalactites.
The pagoda, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of Hanoi, is one of Vietnam's most popular pilgrimage sites and the faithful pray for health, wealth and happiness at the shrines.
A handful of foreign tourists also visit it every weekend during the festival season which follows the lunar new year and falls this year from mid-February to mid-April.
"It's an amazing sight," said a British tourist vying for space on the route up the mountain. "I've never seen people in such numbers."
More people are visiting the Perfume Pagoda every year. From 280,000 visitors in 1992, the number rose to 320,000 last year and 400,000 are expected this year, according to local officials.
At fees of 15,000 dong (US$1.40) for a Vietnamese and 70,000 dong ($6.50) for a foreigner, it's a major earner.
Visitors get to the giant limestone grotto on Huong Tich (The Mountain of Fragrant Traces) by road to the small town of Ben Duc.
From there they take one of 2,000 small rowing boats that ply a stream called The Swallow for a one-hour ride to the foot of the mountain against a stunning backdrop of hills and fields.
From the base of the mountain, visitors trudge more than a mile (two km) to the top.
Crush
It's not a difficult hike but damp weather and humidity can make the path -- rocks worn smooth by millions of feet over the years -- muddy and slippery.
There is no way one can move quickly, at least on Sundays, the popular day for visits. There are too many people ahead and behind, trying to move up and down the trail.
So great is the crush on peak Sundays in the festival season that the facilities appear overstretched.
On one recent peak Sunday, 30,000 people thronged the mountain, according to the Vietnam Investment Review, which reported bottlenecks at a checkpoint on The Swallow and a traffic jam of boats.
On a less busy Sunday two weeks later, about 14,000 people visited the pagoda. There were no problems getting to and from the mountain. But the crush of people prevented hundreds from reaching the cavern at the top.
At several points, there was danger of people getting pushed off the side of the path down the mountainside -- not a sheer drop, but nasty nonetheless.
Inside the grotto, smoke from incense sticks hangs densely in the air as devotees offer food at the altars.
Founded in the 17th century, the complex includes several temples other than the main cavern.
Carefree
Peddlers hawk cheap souvenirs and Buddhist amulets and food stalls line the trail to the pagoda.
Beggars, once common, have been banned.
Though most visitors are devout Buddhist pilgrims, the atmosphere is as carefree as Sunday outings anywhere in the world.
Up and down the route, country people greet foreign visitors -- still an unusual sight outside the big cities -- with shouts of "lien xo" (Soviet) or "tay" (Westerner).
Until communist Vietnam started to modernize its economy on market lines and open up the country in the late 1980s, most foreigners here were Soviet citizens or East Europeans. Now, most tourists and foreign residents are Western.
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