Black Friday

Friday, February 13, will go down in my personal history as The Day of the Abusive Frenchman and the Whinging Pom. I had booked a tour out to the Perfume Pagoda (ironically named, but more on that later), a tour being the most cost effective way to see sights far from the city center. Vietnam is fairly organized this way, and it is possible to go almost everywhere as part of a mini-group as a cost effective alternative to a taxi or local bus. Sometimes, a guide is included. This is the way I went to the My Son Cham towers and the DMZ.

From the moment I boarded the mini-bus for Perfume Pagoda, 2 men in back were complaining (this must have been going on from the time they got on the bus). The pom (Englishman) at one point loudly proclaimed England’s superiority to Vietnam, citing the number of colonies it had achieved by the 20th century. At another point, the Frenchman said “This is all shit!” as only a Frenchman can. They both verbally abused our guide mercilessly, and made the rest of us miserable, oblivious to the effect of their sourness of the others in the group (which included 4 nice Vietnamese people). I tried to drown out the complaints by cranking my iPod, or just walking away if I could. I just kept thinking about how these 2 give all foreigners a bad name and their ugliness was making me physically ill.

Ah, so onto the Perfume Pagoda, the most sacred of all pagodas in Vietnam. It is quite a pilgrimage to get there, as the trail up to the summit of the limestone mountain, where the pagoda is located, is only accessible by boat. Thousands of rowboats (manned mainly by women) ply the waters to take the Vietnamese pilgrims (and very few foreigners). After a peaceful hour on the river, we arrived at the chaos: shops selling all manner of goods for altar offerings, cavernous restaurants, street vendors, and thousands and thousands of people. Working our way through this, I saw various whole roasted animals strung up in front of restaurants, and I am sure a few of them were dogs (nausea again, and a desire to run all the way back to California). (Whenever I see a dog here in Northern Vietnam, I can't help wondering when it will become someone's meal. The guide for Ha Long Bay said that families have no hesitation to kill the family pet if someone has a hankering for dog meat).

The whole place, including the floor the cave (where the pagoda is located), was littered with orange peels, cigarette butts, plastic bottles, and other debris. I just don’t get it. Would Catholics do the same in the Vatican? Or is the culture so completely different as to rubbish, that my California brain can’t comprehend? Unfortunately, the river was just as bad, as people use it as a trash dump (the norm here in Asia).