We did our Perfume Pagoda trip today. It involved a two-hour van trip (which was more comfortable than our van trip from Vinh to Hanoi), a one-hour rowboat trip (the boat with four of us in it was paddled by one local woman), and a 90-minute hike uphill. At the end of this, we saw a cave that was actually not much better than the Pak Ou caves in Laos, which was significantly easier to get to. However, the boat trip was rather fabulous. The scenery was spectacular. The boat was uncomfortable, though, so I had to endure Ian’s bellyaching about his butt. It was a very shallow boat, so we were sitting on hard little stools about four inches high and in a narrow space so we pretty much had to have our knees at our chins.
We ran in to some forceful street vendors today. They employed a technique that we had not yet encountered. When we arrived in the village that the boat departed from, they descended upon us. Each one of these woman chose one of us and asked us our nationality, name, age and number of children. After each question, they told us their answer to the same question. Then they tried to sell us a packet of postcards or a little bracelet. After we declined, they gave us one of these bracelets as a “souvenir” and told us their name about 10 times and pointed to their head to indicate that we should commit the name to memory. When we tried to give the bracelets back, they wouldn’t take them. They kept saying “later.” This same thing happened at the end of the boat ride, at the foot of the trail. We had four bracelets by the time we got out of there.
When we returned to the foot of the trail and to the village, each of our women grabbed us and reminded us of her name and tried to get us to buy postcards and bracelets. When we declined, they got pretty mad.
Similarly, our boat rower kept saying throughout the entire return journey, “sir, madam, some people, boat money.” It took us a while to understand this, but we did eventually discern what she was saying and understand that she wanted a tip. At the end of the ride, Ian gave her a small tip (the tickets had been pre-paid) and she got all insulted and said it wasn’t enough. One guy in our group said that the same thing happened to him and that his rower tried to grab a 100,000 dong note (more than $6 – the tickets were something like $2) out of his hand.
All in all, our trip was fun, though. Tomorrow we’ll check out of our hotel and head out for our Halong Bay tour, which we’re eagerly anticipating. We booked with a pricey tour operator, so we’re expecting a small group, good guide, and a nice boat.
We suspect that we won’t write again until Sunday.