April 20, 2002
The buzz around Vietnam
A zippy bike is not the recommended way to tour this spiritual land -- unless time counts
Claude Adams
Southam Newspapers
HANOI - There are several ways to venture into the heart of Vietnamese Buddhism. You can go by tour bus, by bicycle, or simply in sandals like a pilgrim. I decided to go by Minsk. The Minsk is a two-stroke motorcycle built for speed and bad roads.
It is a lunatic way to travel, in a country where chaos is the highway code and motoring deaths escalate every month. But the Russian bike is irresistibly cheap -- US$5-a-day rental in Hanoi's Old Quarter -- and its carnivore growl concentrates the mind wonderfully. And if your guide knows his business, he can have you inside the cathedral-like Perfume Pagoda, near the top of the Mountain of Fragrant Traces, within five hours of leaving your Hanoi hotel.
This kind of supersonic plunge into spirituality isn't for everybody. You should not rush Vietnam. Like so much of Asia, it needs to reveal itself slowly, in first gear. But I have only a day, and if I am to experience the annual Spring Festival in Chua Huong, 70 kilometres southwest of the capital, it will have to be today, right now, at high throttle.
"Follow me closely until we get out of town or you'll get lost," says Tuan, my guide. Tuan is in front because his Minsk has a rear-view mirror. Mine does not. It is a stripped-down, fire-engine red model, without a single dial, gauge or switch on the handlebars to distract me. Tuan is a 29-year-old philosophy and law graduate from Hanoi National University. Because he is smart, speaks English and can drive a motorcycle, he can make a lot more money from tourism than from Kierkegaard, or criminal law. So I shadow Tuan and breathe his exhaust fumes as we snake through the hellish traffic of early morning Hanoi.
Once on Highway 6 toward Ninh Binh the traffic thins, I relax and unclench my fists from the rubber grips. I clutch into fourth gear and the Minsk jumps like a startled horse. We zip past rice fields and brick factories and roadside bamboo markets. We slow down slightly in the village of Bat, alert for wayward bicycles and cattle. Then we gun it again. Heads turn. My helmet is an olive-green Vietnam Army model, so tight it hurts.
Two hours later, we pull into Chua Huong. Almost every square metre of the inner harbour is filled with steel rowboats. "It's a quiet day in the festival," Tuan says. "Today is the 23rd day of the lunar calendar. It's one of the three unlucky days of the month. Superstitious people say that today is a day when you have financial problems. So many stay home."
On the dock, we find Vo the Boatwoman. Vo, wearing a pink blouse, will row us down the Yen Stream to the base of the Fragrant Traces mountain, and back, for 8,000 dong. That is about US50¢. (Her boss, who owns the boats, gets $10.) Vo rows like an Olympian -- 45 strokes a minute, non-stop, for an hour. Her husband sits on the bow, smoking and contemplating the cosmos.
We are in a fairy-tale valley. The shallow stream is bounded by the brilliantly green young rice shoots. On both sides are the famous karst mountains, with their distinctive jagged, compressed contours.
"We have a legend," says Tuan. "Look at the mountains. Imagine a mother dragon, followed by nine baby dragons. She tells them to keep up and look straight ahead. But the baby in back disobeys. That baby gets bitten on the rear. You can see the shape." Indeed, you can, a small dragon-mountain with a piece chewed out of the rump.
BUDDHISM BOUND: Boatloads of families make their way along the fairy-tale valley of the Yen to the spring festival in Chua Huong, 70 kilometres southwest of Hanoi.
We dock at a bamboo village. It has been thrown up almost overnight to handle the festival pilgrims. The stalls, rest houses and restaurants line the steep three-kilometre path up the mountain. It is a cruel walk, with hawkers offering their wares every step of the way -- water, walking-sticks, food, cheap souvenirs. Last year, the government banned beggars and freelance porters, who used to carry old pilgrims up the hill on their backs for a few thousand dong. The authorities also shut down 42 "fake" pagodas and shrines erected on the mountain to fleece pilgrims.
"A hard walk," I say to Tuan, breathing hard. "Yes, but a good thing to do," he replies. "All Vietnamese Buddhists want to make this journey at least once in their lifetime." (About 10% of Vietnam's 80 million people are Buddhist.)
There are five sacred pagodas, but the most awe-inspiring is Huong Tich. It is called the Perfume Pagoda, but it is, in fact, an immense grotto, a vaulting cave that is reached by 120 descending steps. For more than four centuries, this has been the Holy of Holies of Vietnamese Buddhism.
On a granite slab are carved the words: "The most beautiful grotto under the southern sky." Inside are hundreds of faithful, murmuring their prayers. A few brown-robed monks are in attendance. Visitors drop 200-dong notes in a collection tray, and light incense sticks. It is the fragrant smell that gives the pagoda its name.
I ask Tuan about the religious fervour of Vietnamese. "Many people come to pray, and wish for a better life," he says. "But this festival is also a good place for boys to meet girls. Many relationships start here."
I like to think that, were he living today, the Buddha would be amused by this fact. He was not averse to the modern. He might even have enjoyed kick-starting a Minsk.
