Cây cổ

And, just for fun, shots of the old building half hidden behind the sparkly new pagoda with the shining horse in it. Somehow I liked this one more .. I guess peeling paint and crooked tiles put me at ease.

Over the River and through the Woods ...

The procession of rowboats proceeded, happily, one after another, to be swallowed underneath that wee mountain you see above. Passage through the wee mountain's nether regions involved a bit of ducking and a few solid wacks of oar-on-rock in narrow spots, but no further complications.

The rowboaters union rules specify "no dumping of tourists" - even the foreign ones...

Tourism Trang An

Trang An tourism site takes you on a rowboat ride to ... (wait for it) ... more pagodas. With haughty gold-encrusted dudes in funny hats.

After a short hike from the boat landing into a hidden valley type of place, another pagoda. Altars complete with clementines, flowers, pomelo, small change, beer Hanoi and Choco-pie.

And the smiling-est horse ever, I think she's just glowing because of her new hairdo.

Bai Dinh - Raising the Roof

This shot shows something of the scale of this place, taken from near the top looking down along the outside of the covered stairway. You can see the bell tower near the bottom of the hill, and the main gate down by the lake.

Does that come with free ringtones??

Bai Dinh - the people

The 'plaza' in front of the largest building at the top of the mountain. It's basically just a big party.

Sadly, I'm not totally up to speed on Vietnamese deities, so I can't really tell you about this guy. But, while it seems he does have to carry around a few things, he did get the prime real estate of the whole place, on the very peak, and the view is amazing.

This is one of several massive bronze bells that were sitting around waiting to be hung somewhere I guess. Something tells me it's not so easy to get a good ring out of a bell like that, I hope they pay the guy well who has that job!

Yes those are drums - for part of the festival they had a procession which was accompanied by some drumming. Sadly, I don't think I can import one of those back to the US, although I'm sure it would look great sitting in the driveway ... maybe I could park my scooter inside it!

Bai Dinh Pagoda

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.