Religion in a Cave

Sorry for not posting my travels for yesterday (Sunday’s) adventures until today (Monday). I had an extremely busy day and then the internet didn’t work at all here in the dorm.

On Saturday night, I took the bus to Bia Hoi Junction with DiDi and most of our crew. I had to find dinner with DiDi because she wanted a very specific meal with glass noodles and chicken. Then she ate most of my lollipop that I got from the night market. We sat around in the street and I had my usual Coke. A bunch of us left there at about 10:30 to walk over a few blocks to Finnegan’s Irish pub.

I watched rugby and drank my Sprite until we all decided to leave at 11:30. This was mostly because Leah and Brittany got kicked out because they brought their own alcohol into the bar, but I was ok with leaving so early. DiDi and I xe-omed it back and it was kind of scary because the driver either didn’t know the way or just wanted to take us a different way through the back alleys of Hanoi. We got back to the dorm and chilled out with a bunch of people until about 12:30 am when I went back to the room and read and then crashed.

On Sunday morning I woke up to my alarm at 7:30 am and immediately went to go and get breakfast for Jill and I. The tradeoff was that Jill went to go and get minutes for her phone while I got breakfast.

I ate my egg sandwich and then called Mrs. C for her birthday, since it was technically her Saturday evening. I also got to quickly talk to Mr. C and Andy! It was so nice to finally speak with some family. Then our group got on two small vans and I slept with my head on DiDi’s lap for the entire 2-hour bus ride.

I was immensely groggy getting up and out of the van and then predictably took lots of pictures as we all got into a small steel canoe. Our boat had a rower as well as Jackie, Leah, and DiDi. Didi made friends with the woman and she’s 27 years old and has been married since she was 15. She had to move to the mountains with her husband because neither of their families wanted them to get married at such a young age. Our boat driver has two sons; one is nine years old and the younger one is two months old. It was an hour boat ride and it was so much fun because we were singing and looking for good pictures of animals and people. We even saw these two monks and they were taking pictures with their really nice cameras and sending text messages on their cell phones.

We got off the boats after an hour and it was time for lunch already. We walked up this giant hill and reached a touristy restaurant. A bunch of us decided we were going to hike the rest of the way to the perfume pagoda instead of taking the gondola, so we all went pee in the squat toilets and ate our rice, beef, and veggies really fast. I stocked up on lots of water and then set off with the group of about nine others and we hiked really fast. I had to stop and take pictures periodically. It was an amazing view and we saw things like a monkey chained to a rock and lots of chickens, which I stayed far away from. We reached the top of the mountain in about half an hour and found that the rest of the group that had taken gondolas was not there yet. I then went down a bunch of wet and slippery stairs to the actual pagoda, which turned out to be a cave. I didn’t have anything to say because I was so stunned and awestruck. There were monks wearing their tan robes everywhere, and they were of all ages. I walked into the cave and it was dark except for the candles and the people praying and leaving things for the statues. There was even a Coke and a Red Bull left for one of the Buddha statues. I stood there with my calf muscles quivering and I just cried. It’s just so different to sit in America and learn about Buddha having 557 lives and 108 beads on a prayer bead set. It’s a totally different story to view and be with the people who dedicate their lives to their religion. Reading the books doesn’t do it all any justice. I suppose any religion is like that actually.

It was a really special and unique spiritual experience and I didn’t take that many pictures because I was thinking too much. Like our visit to the Cao Dai Holy See, I felt odd taking pictures of these people praying. The rest of our group arrived and I went over to speak some Vietnamese with the younger monks hanging out on the stairs. They told me they were 16 and 17 years old and that they were from Da Lat. Then I went over and sat with this kid Tony and he said it was “stupid” that the Buddhist monks don’t marry and procreate. I was dumbfounded, since he was basically the model American my professors had been trying to warn me about. He was using his western framework of values to construct judgments about things he didn’t really even understand. His reasoning was that this absurd idea was his opinion and therefore he was entitled to it. I couldn’t even argue with him that forcefully, since he wasn’t going to budge and I was exhausted.

Our group left at about 2:00 and stopped to get more drinks before walking a bit more to reach the gondola loading station. I went with Monica, Leah, Jackie, Jill, and DiDi and was reminded of my recent vacation with Andy and his parents. I actually wondered on the way up the mountain which trek Andy would have chosen—a long, arduous hike or an extremely high gondola ride. :)

The gondola ride was very short and then we all stopped briefly to get ice cream and visit the squat toilets again before boarding our same boats. We sang and took many pictures on the way back to the vans. We also saw an awesome water snake which really scared DiDi. The woman driving our boat pestered DiDI for a bigger tip for the last leg of the trip, and it was very awkward for her. It was also hurtful because then it was difficult for DiDi to determine the driver’s motivations for being so friendly to her previously. After another hour boat ride and a quick visit to some more squat toilets, we got back on the same vans and departed for the dorms. It took two and a half hours and DiDi slept with her head on my lap. I listened to some music on my mp3 player and took pictures of the rice fields as the sun went down. At one point, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came up on the shuffle feature. There was something intensely ironic about listening to the song “Find the Cost of Freedom,” a Vietnam War protest song, while traveling on a bus through the rice paddies.

We got back to the dorm at 6:30 pm and I took a quick shower while all of my pictures uploaded to my computer. I then met DiDi in her room at 7:30 in order to go and eat dinner at her old roommate’s family’s house. We went out and bought flowers for our hosts before engaging in some extreme bargaining for a xe-om ride. After a 15-minute ride, we arrived at her friend Diep’s family’s house and met her and her mom, dad, and little brother. I was very nervous I would do something wrong and didn’t speak much, especially since the bulk of the speaking was in rapid-fire Vietnamese. Her friend’s mother was very funny and kept telling me to eat more. As a direct result, I had about 16 spring rolls as well as all the peanuts in northern Vietnam. I was stuffed and then the wine and fruit came out. I had two bananas then. With all this eating, I felt like I was back at Andy’s grandparents’ house and his Italian family was encouraging me to eat more in a language other than English. After thanking our hosts and receiving peaches from them, we couldn’t find a xe-om so Diep and her brother gave us rides back to the dorm on their xe-may’s at about 10:00 pm. I got back to the dorm and changed, talked to Jackie and Leah about teaching tomorrow, and then wrote the preliminary draft for this blog.

Don’t forget to comment on both of the blogs! :)