Religious Devotion

On a visit to a temple in Saigon, we intruded on a memorial ceremony.

Those attending the memorial ceremony seemed to be oblivious of the crowd in the temple, unself-conscious about expressing their wishes for the soul of their dead relative.

I wish I knew what this temple official was writing.

This is the priest in charge of the memorial ritual.

Here is the priest again, chanting.

After a while they went outside to an altar they had set up.

This is another priest, officiating at the ceremony.  Our guide said that it was quite expensive to arrange a memorial ceremony like this.

In another temple people were lighting incense.

We were intrigued by these incense spirals.  Fragrance contibutes a great deal to the sense of devotion one feels in the temples in Vietnam, in contrast to the Jewish ritual we are familiar with, where fragrance is used on Saturday nights to separate the Sabbath from weekdays, but not elsewhere.  In the Temple, incense was an important part of the ritual, something we've lost along with the Temple, and an easier thing to accept than animal sacrifice.

Two Monks

Huy, our guide, took us to the monastery associated with Thic Nhat Hanh in Hue.  Here's a monk with his motorbike and his cellphone.  Why shouldn't we expect them to be ordinary human beings as well as Buddhist monks?

After I bought something in the store at the monastery, I asked this young monk if I could take his picture, and he agreed.

Living Religion

Before visiting Vietnam I had never been in a Buddhist country, though I had read a good deal about Buddhism and attended several meditation retreats.  I was surprised to see how many temples and pagodas there were, and how active they were.  The people of Vietnam are involved in their religion.

I wish I had asked our guide for an explanation of what this man was offering visitors to the sacred site.

Old People

Vietnam's population of over ninety million is overwhelmingly young, which accounts for the vigor and energy you feel there.  It also accounts for the strong feeling we got from our guides that the country's ideology is: let's put the past behind us and stride toward the future!
Still, I found myself looking at some of the old people in the public space and taking pictures of them.  The old people who were visible, available to be photographed, were selling things or working, people who had probably lived long, hard lives, and whose lives are still not very easy.

This woman was selling slices of fresh pineapple on a stick.

The venerable oarsman!

On the street in Hoi An.

She's counting money.

She sold us some incense at a temple, and when I asked permission to take her picture, she struck this proud pose.

Children

At the Temple of Literature in Hanoi we came upon an enormous gathering of schoolchildren, including a group of young drummers.

The kids were far from docile.  They were noisy, active, and excited, but always within the limits of order.

I enjoyed seeing this girl's serious expression.

This little boy is plumper than most of the Vietnamese people we saw.

In the museum of Cham sculpture in Da Nang, we saw this little Korean boy taking a picture of his parents.

Gambling in the Street

While we were strolling along the riverbank promenade in Hue, we saw a group of people intensely involved in some activity.  When we approached, we saw what they were doing.

The man who was running the game put some tokens in the cup, shook it, and people bet on the number that came up.

Around the people who were actually gambling a group of spectators formed.  They were so involved in what they were doing, that they ignored me.

This young man was deciding whether to bet.

Women were betting alongside men.  After a while a tough-looking young man did notice that I was taking pictures and told me to stop, but no one else cared.

A Culinary Arts School for Young People Who Need a Future

 We decided to go to Vietnam rather impulsively.  We wanted to go somewhere warm in late February, when we could get free.  We had heard of the Streets International Project, because it was created by Neal Bermas, who was our son Asher's teacher in the restaurant management course that he took in New York.  Neal was very kind to Asher and was hoping that Asher would come to Vietnam as a volunteer in his project. If Asher hadn't fallen to his death in Peru, his next stop would most probably have been Vietnam, so our visit was also a tribute to Asher's memory.
This program takes young people from very impoverished backgrounds and teaches them both cooking skills and hospitality skills, as well as English, so that they can find employment in Vietnam's rapidly expanding tourist industry.

 This picture was taken in a classroom.  The students were waiting for their teacher.  Happiness and optimism glow on their faces.
No comment is necessary here.
The founder of the project, Neal Bermas, travelled to Vietnam pretty soon after the country began to welcome tourists, and he fell in love with it.  Motivated by the feeling that America had done so much harm to the country that it was only right for Americans to do some good for it, he took on this project with all his professional skills and intelligence.

 The school runs a fine restaurant in Hoi An, and we recommend it highly.
Eat there and make a contribution to the project, too.

Ordinary People doing Ordinary Things

A thoughtful customer in the restaurant at the Perfume Pagoda.

The traffic in the large cities is intense.  When the people on their scooters noticed that I was taking their picture, they smiled.  The motorbikes flow like schools of fish.  The Vietnamese have nerves of steel.

This was one of the boatwomen in the floating fishermen's village in Ha Long Bay.  We were taken on quite a few boat trips, and more than half the time, the people rowing were women.

A bride and groom preparing a photo album on a street in Hoi An.

The man in the yellow shirt is a member of a group of Korean cyclists.  The woman in the red dress makes a living posing for photographs with tourists at the Japanese bridge in Hoi An.  The woman taking the photograph shares the fees.  At least that's what I think is going on here.

Another bride and groom preparing for their wedding in Hoi An.

This young woman was working in a shop in Hoi An that raises money for needy people by selling handicrafts.  She spoke good English with an Australian accent, because she had spent a year in Australia learning how to sew wedding dresses.

Our boat trip on the Mekong included a fine meal in a restaurant on a local farm.  Among the attractions of the restaurant was a python, and this guide was showing off with it.

Water Merchants

Tourists are not advised to drink the water.

This boatman was glad to have me take his picture, with the kind of friendliness we encountered over and over again in Vietnam.

I have mentioned the floating market in the Mekong Delta in another post.  The people here are too busy buying and selling to notice that scores of tourists are taking pictures of them.

This man has bought pineapples from a middleman on a large boat or barge, and now he's bringing them ashore to sell them.  We ate so much pineapple on this trip that we almost got tired of them.

When this child's mother noticed that I was taking their picture, she withdrew.  Our guide explained to us that parents keep little children with them on the boats until they're school age.

Working People

The restaurant where we ate lunch at the Perfume Pagoda was huge and efficient.

A busy kitchen worker can still find some time to text.

We were taken to a family run candy factory in the Mekong Delata.  This young man is stirring some syrup.

At Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and his residence, the guards wore the cleanest uniforms I've ever seen.

This artisan is placing eggshells on a wooden plaque, in a lacquer-ware workshop in Hanoi.

This is one of our guides, Ha, in the cable car at the Perfume Pagoda.  He didn't want to take us there, because it's rather undignified: crowded, commercial, and totally not a show put on for tourists.  But for us it was one of the high points of our visit to Vietnam, because we saw the people as they are, eating dogs and porcupines, crowding into temples, and being themselves.

Back in the candy factory.

Some of the candy was made of puffed rice.  This young man is stirring the rice, mixed with sand, which they later strain out, to keep it from burning while it puffs up.