A Visit to Vietnam - Part Two, Arrival and the Tran Quoc Pagoda

Travel to Vietnam 

Our departure to visit Vietnam was scheduled for 1:20 AM so we headed to the Cairo airport at about 10:30 PM.  We were traveling on Qatar Airways with an intermediate stop at Doha, just across the Arabian Gulf from Iran.

It's about a three hour flight to Doha, then four hours between planes and another six and a half hours to Hanoi.  With five hours time difference, we would arrive at around 3:00 PM, Egyptian time - 8:00 PM local Vietnam time. 

Doha International Airport has a rather exotic feel.  Coming out of the long concourse passage we were greeted by a lobby filled with tall green trees and flowing water, perhaps intended to be reminiscent of an oasis in the desert.
  
 

After the long flight we were met at the airport in Hanoi by a driver from our tour company, Way To Vietnam, and soon headed downtown to our hotel.  Our first glimpse of the town came as we crossed the colorfully lighted Vanh Dai bridge  over the Red River.  In the distance a number of high-rise buildings were also lit with decorative colors celebrating the New Year.

  

Ms. Huong Bui at Way To Vietnam had arranged hotels, tour guides and drivers for us for the entire two-week visit.  She made excellent choices. Our hotel in Hanoi was the Silk Path Hotel in the "Old Town" section of the city. 

    

 

While checking in, I changed some money.  The exchange rate is approximately 25,000 to 1; handing the desk clerk two hundred dollars, I received five million Vietnamese dong in exchange - we were instant millionaires!  Here is the Hundred Thousand dong note with Ho Chi Minh's picture on the front.  He is also found on the front of the 500,000 200,000 50,000 20,000 10,000 5,000 2,000 and 1,000 dong notes.

  

We were glad to get to the hotel for some genuine rest after the long plane ride and agreed with our driver to start our tour the next day at 9:00 A.M.

The guide for our time in Hanoi was Mike (his real name is difficult for westerners) and we headed out for a whirlwind tour of several of the prominent tourist sites.  The driver brought along a 5G sim chip for my cellphone so that we would have Internet access anywhere we ventured in the country.

 

At its heart, Hanoi is a very old city officially founded in 1010 although the area was settled much earlier than that.  From a population of about 260,000 in 1950 it has grown rapidly to its current population of 8.5 million. (you can find just about any number from 6 million to 10 million in various sources)  It is very much a city of lakes with two of them, West Lake and Hoan Kiem Lake both within walking distance of our hotel.

 

The Tran Quoc Pagoda 

Our first stop on the morning tour was a small island on the edge of West Lake to visit the Tran Quoc Pagoda, the oldest Buddhist pagoda in Hanoi, dating from the sixth century.  This pagoda is a popular stop for local Buddhists during the Tet new-year celebration so it was very crowded.  Guide Mike gave us a brief introduction to religious customs and temple offerings as we toured the temple.

 

Inside the pagoda, there were numerous offerings including food, flowers and small Buddha statues left in honor of departed ancestors. 

 

A well-worn brass plaque details the pagoda's history including famous students and visitors.  It also explains the history of the nearby Bodhi fig tree.

In 1959, the President of India, Mr. Rajender Prasad visited Vietnam.He brought a seedling of the Bodhi tree (taken from the Bodhi tree where Shakyamuni Buddha attained Nirvana over 25 centuries ago) and planted it in the Pagoda. 

Circling the Bodhi tree or meditating beneath it is part of Buddhist practice.  To find a Bodhi tree near you, check out this Wikipedia page.

 

Perhaps the most notable and certainly the most photographed feature of the temple site for western visitors is the towering stupa dating from 1998.   

 

  

 

I freely confess to not having encountered the term "stupa" previously.  Browsing the Internet didn't help much.  I only encountered references to domed structures such as this:

The tower-shaped stupa seems to have evolved in Vietnam and China without much documentation or historical context.  (see note at the bottom of this post for another interesting example of the style)  Fortunately, Vietnam Airlines gives us a bit more insight into this particular example:

The 11-storey stupa was built in 1998, which is the most striking feature of Tran Quoc Pagoda, standing tall at 15 meters. Its symmetrical design, adorned with intricately carved lotus motifs, symbolizes spiritual enlightenment. Each of its 11 tiers features six arched windows, each housing a meticulously crafted Amitabha Buddha statue made from precious stone, totaling 66 statues.

Crowning the stupa is a nine-tiered lotus pedestal, also made of gemstone, symbolizing spiritual ascension. Positioned in harmony with the sacred Bodhi tree gifted by Indian President Rajendra Prasad in 1959 and propagated from the original tree in Bodh Gaya...

Vietnam Discovery also has an entry for the Tran Quoc Pagoda which includes the following observation:

Due to its beautiful and peaceful scenery, Tran Quoc Pagoda was mentioned in a lot of poems and parallel sentences of Vietnamese kings and mandarins, especially under Nguyen Dynasty. Until now, there are many poems preserved in the pagoda. You will have a chance to get to know Vietnamese literature style in the past and the country’s history also.

Several poems appear posted around the Pagoda.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of Google Translate's interpretation but here are a pair of them. 

Perhaps the leaves swaying in the breeze have had an adverse effect on the translator!

 

More photos at this Flickr Album, of course.

 

Notes:

Another example of a tall stupa in a Vietnamese temple is found about sixty miles south of Hanoi in the Ninh Binh province.  The Wikipedia entry for the Bai Dinh Temple complex includes this photograph of a tall stupa under construction;

 

The usually comprehensive Wikipedia has an entry for Stupa that begins, "a stupa is a domed hemispherical structure containing several types of sacred relics..." The accompanying photos don't include any stupas like the ones seen above. 

 

We were curious about the religious orientation of the Vietnamese.  Browsing several Internet sites seems to validate the Wikipedia numbers of about 75% irreligious, 13% Buddhist and 7% Catholic.  The 75% irreligious, however, is also interpreted as containing a large cohort of "folk religion" and ancestor worship.  Throughout the country, there is a lot of incense being burned in honor of ancestors, at least during Tet.