Historic Bai Dinh Pagoda is near Hoa Lu, site of the capital of Vietnam before it was moved to Hanoi 1000 years ago (as of last October). There is still an old pagoda there, halfway up a mountain, a small wooden building which sits in front of a cave housing ancient statues, a mystical pond/puddle, some mesmerizing traditional musicians, and a lot of giddy teenagers. But, the main attraction is on the other side of the mountain where they are building a massive compound including three large temples housing the giant Buddhas you see above, a bell tower for a bell the size of a house (smallish house), a covered stairway that goes up the mountain on one side of the compound and back down on the other side, and various other buildings that aren't finished yet. It's really big, that's what I'm trying to say.
Vietnamese temples attract large crowds during 'festival season' in the spring. It seems that, as when judging sidewalk restaurants, people go to the crowded places because if there are that many people it must be worthwhile. Anyway, I was at Bai Dinh for the spring festival there, and since the place is so incredibly massive, while there were crowded spots, it wasn't hard to avoid the crush. These two pictures, I like to think, show the fluidity of motion in the crowd inside the pagodas, its sort of a swirling eddy motion as people come in and push up to the statues and then wiggle back out the same way. Or, all those blurry faces could just mean I have a cheap camera ...
The inside of all the main buildings and the outer wall along the walkways was lined with niches like this, each with its own Buddha statue. The cumulative effect reminded me of an old post office, and I kept looking in them to see if there was anything different about the next Buddha.
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