day 36 - Perfume Pagoda - 21.09

Perfume Pagoda is situated 60km southwest from Hanoi so it was about 2h bus ride to get there. Our group consisted of 8 people:
-- a couple from UK - the guy had competed in his first Triathlon this year, half of Olympic Distance, later we talked about triathlon half way up the hill
-- two quiet ladies from Germany
-- one crabby old economy teacher from Austria
-- one younger guy from Australia
-- one economy professor from India - he was very talkative and on the way there we got to cover half of Estonian customs and half of worlds economy systems :D, second half got covered on the way back. On top of all he suggested working in Bangalore for me :) Not a bad idea huh?

There are many theories of where the name Perfume comes from since there is nothing that smells good over there :) As the travel guide explains: Perfume Pagoda is a striking complex of pagodas and Buddhist shrines built into the karst cliffs of Huong Tich Mountain (Mountain of the Fragrant Traces). The only way to get there is by boat. So once we got off the bus we boarded the very basic boats - there were two narrow wooden benches where 4 of us were seated. Boat ride was 1 hour, my but started hurting after 30 minutes already though. Boat was rowed by a very professional lady and again the scenery was beautiful.

We were scheduled to visit 2 temples. First temple was close to where we got off the boats. After visiting the first temple we had a nice lunch. The second temple should have been reachable by cable car, but it turned out that cable car was broken on that day :( So we hiked up, which was not bad either. Second, the most famous temple, was situated in a cave. Cave was huuuuge and had 2 entries, on the very back there was the main altar and other altars were scattered around the cave on both sides. The way back went quickly as it was exactly the same track and boat ride.

In the evening we went out to eat with the Australian and with the guy from India - first dinner and then couple of drinks in a second story balcony cafe looking over the lake :)

I will be leaving the day after tomorrow :(