The Fraser Suites apartment that I live in organizes periodic tour trips to locations in the vicinity of Hanoi, but until last Sunday, I had never taken one of the trips. Honestly, most tourist destinations in the locality of Hanoi don't interest me and this one scheduled for Tay Thien didn't look particularly different.
Diep had signed up for the trip on Friday while I was at work, with the intention of taking Megan along. Megan balked immediately, leaving Diep to find another tour partner. She asked me, and though I was reluctant to go, I agreed because I knew I was going away for a whole month next week. Diep gave me an "out" saying she could get someone else to go with her, but I stuck with it, knowing Sunday was Mother's Day and wanting to do something with her.
Tay Thien Meditation Center is a large complex in Tam Dao Distict, Vinh Phuc Province, 85 kilometers northwest of Hanoi. There are several temples and pagodas within the complex and a cable car that connects the lower reception center with the temples and pagodas near the top of one of the mountains. Tam Dao Mountain Range skirts the outlying western side of Hanoi, and is better known as Thud Ridge to pilots who used to go "Downtown" during the war. There are many aircraft crash sites in the Tam Dao Mountain Range, though it is better known by the Vietnamese as a colonial tourist destination for French tourists back in the day, and for Hanoians looking for a day trip or weekend destination out of the city.
First and foremost, I was much unimpressed with the pagodas and temples. Though the area has a long history in Vietnam, there is very little still on the site that is older than a decade or two. The humidity and termites make sure most structures in Vietnam get rebuilt over and over again every twenty years or less. This may be an unfair statement since I don't care much for the religious tourism that exists in Vietnam in the form of pilgrimages to the various historic, religious sites.
The cable car helps those pilgrims with time constraints or health issues to get from the reception center to the holier sites on top of the mountain by cutting the 7-plus kilometer hike up the mountain down to a 10 minute, scenic cable car tour. While this was convenient for the time our group had at Tay Thien, it was fairly sterile of any real interaction with nature. Before getting on the cable car, many of the members of the tour group had stated they wanted to walk down the mountain rather than take the cable car, Diep and I included. After the ride up, however, many opted out of the walk and decided to take the cable car back. There was only Diep and I, along with another man from Hong Kong who still wanted to walk after getting to the top.
The walk back was on a concrete stairway, winding through dense trees and across streams, offering very scenic views of a prominent waterfall on the way. There are rest stations located every 200 - 300 meters which was good for those walking up the mountain, but fairly unnecessary for us walking down. Anyone who has walked hills for a significant distance, however, knows that it is nearly as hard to walk down hill as it is to walk up. This was good for me to show Diep that my job isn't always a five-star lifestyle; that visiting crash sites in remote mountainous areas is a chore to some degree.
Diep almost stepped on a snake on the path, as well. It wasn't big and looked harmless, but it is hard to tell around here since most snakes in SE Asia are poisonous. It would seem one would see snakes in Vietnam all the time, but that generally is not the case since most wildlife is snatched up and put in the pot as quickly as you can say, "Boo!"
Diep got up this morning a little sore in the calves, but she had a good time. I did, too!
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