Last Sunday, I decided to get out by myself and explore Saigon a bit. I met many people along the way, but the most memorable person I met was Uy. She was my tour guide at the Reunification Palace. We got to talking, and she invited me to join her when she went to worship at a pagoda later that afternoon.
She picked me up outside of the Reunification Palace on her motorbike after she got off of work. There I was zipping through Saigon on the back of a Vietnamese girl's motorbike thinking "this is amazing!"
The pagoda that she goes to is known as one of the most beautiful, colorful pagodas in Vietnam. There were a couple dozen people inside and another dozen in front in the courtyard. My first impression was that there was a lot going on. It's difficult to describe (and I'll get some better pictures when I go back) but the inside was full of statues, shrines, insence, urns, murals and candles.
Uy gave me some incense sticks and told me to wish good things for myself as I held the incense between my hands and bowed my head. Then I waved the insence up and down a few times and stuck one in a bowl full of sand so that the insence was sticking out and continuing to burn. We then went to several different stations in several different rooms and did the same thing. It was a wonderful experience to have her show me how she worships and learn about the Vietnamese culture in such an intimate way.
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1 comment:
wow, that's amazing that you got to have that opportunity. I don't have any experience with Eastern religions at all, so that would be something totally new to me.
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