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Published: January 30th 2007
This is WILD !
Getting totally lost south of Hanoi, seeing places where you must travel for miles - and only accessible on foot, bike, or bufallo!Day 241, 27th January
My Duc - Perfume Pagoda
We got blitzed last night and woke up with hazy heads on the floor of a foulded military holding cell. It was disgusting really. Stephane had puked everywhere, Toby had puked over his sleeping bag and fouled his kegs, and I’d just pissed myself! What a disgusting bunch of geezers - what was in that moonshine?
We left after apologizing and cleaning up the cells and headed along dirt roads towards the Perfume Pagoda, not that far away apparently. Apparently we just had to imitate a pagoda and make pagoda noises and the locals would point the way.
After cycling along what can be only described as dirt-trail, no wider than 3 feet, we entered a small town nestled between little humpy hills - “The Halong Bay of the paddy-fields”, Nick said. We passed through and ended up on an even smaller trail which crossed bamboo bridges. Some miles later it ended in a very small village, you could only go by boat from here. In a cave behind the village was a temple, grey and un-visited. It seemed that no westerners get to this place - it
Inland Halong Bay
As Nick said, "This is the Halong Bay of the paddy-fields"! was truly the back and beyond. The whole experience was wonderful and serene, we just chilled there for an hour as the rain fell.
We headed back to the town we’d passed through and discovered it was the starting point for trips to the Perfume Pagoda, so we checked into a cheap hotel there. The other went off on boats to see the pagoda, and I stayed in town and wandered off to a nearby temple armed with joss-sticks. The trick is that when you arrive at a temple, bow, and light a joss-stick - you don’t get hassled! It was actually another serene experience, lighting joss-sticks as offerings to the many Gods and witnessing some kind of local ceremony.
On the way back to town I was followed by some cute kids and an old woman with a lovely set of black and gold teeth. The kids taught me to count to ten in Vietnamese. The guys returned from their trip not actually knowing if they’d actually seen the actual Perfume Pagoda. They’d seen some sort of pagoda and I had the feeling that they felt an anti-climax about the whole experience. We ate at a nearby
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Bottled beer, Beer-Hoi in a pitcher, or direct from the brewery in plastic bottles - BEER, our saviour! café and had an early night…
Total Miles: 10751.74 Todays Miles: 12.90 Average speed: 6.8 Time on bike: 1:51
Day 242, 28th January
Perfume Pagoda - Ninh Binh - Tam Diep
Almost everyone was feeling rough today, except me. Deferred hangovers, I call it, from too much alcohol consumption in Hanoi. We set out just after nine and followed one of the smallest back-water tracks over baily-bridges and through tiny little villages. Messages of communist enlightenment were to be heard over the many loudspeakers in most of the villages.
Eventually, we hit the main road and followed it all the way to Ninh Binh where we tried to find a hotel, but the prices were so high. We didn’t bother, so having tents with us, we headed south to Tam Diep where we heard that there were groovy pagodas. Trouble was there was a check-point on the road which was set up to charge tourists a fortune to carry on and see the bloody pagodas. We were dissapointed with the money, money, money attitude - so we turned around and headed for Tam Diep and headed up a valley asking locals where we could
Boat trip to the Perfume Pagoda
The guys went off by boat, I stopped behind to chill and check-out a temple. camp. A local guy motioned for us to come and camp on the patio of his lovely home overlooking the valley - so we did…
Total Miles: 10807.55 Todays Miles: 55.80 Average speed: 12.7 Time on bike: 4:23
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Tot: 0.377s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 21; qc: 98; dbt: 0.1126s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
