I took public transportation Sunday to go west, toward the Cambodian border, where the sole mountain of this region is located. I headed to the local bus station, which was teeming with people of course, and then waited in suspense for more than 45 minutes to see whether my bus would arrive. It did; the bus driver hardly stopped for me to jump on before swinging back out into traffic.
The ride went on and on, through the endless congested sprawl of Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, before reaching the countryside. I was given some bad information from a well-meaning passenger to get off at a market in the middle of nowhere. But there are many ways to the same destination, and I was ushered to another ramshackle green bus to continue on toward Nui Ba Den, or Black Lady Mountain. The mountain was named after a young Buddhist girl living nearby who killed herself rather than get married. Years later, a Buddhist priest living on the mountain claimed to have seen her ghost and built the Black Virgin pagoda halfway up the mountain in honor of her spirit (according to a couple different Internet sources). (I did a quick search to figure out how the mountain came to be, scientifically speaking, but couldn't find anything right off.)
I was glad for this bus detour through the backroads of Vietnam because I got to see, finally, rice paddies, cattle, herons and a lot of duck chicks swimming in the watery landscape. The colors are beautiful, yellows and greens of all shades, and the water and its reflections seem to add another dimension to the whole scene. Halfway through the ride I looked to my right and could see Nui Ba Den rising like a blue gumdrop in the hazy distance, a geographic anomaly in the flat, waterlogged land. (No photos; I didn't whip out my camera because I was too self-conscious. Must work on that.)
When I arrived, I hopped on the back of a shady taxi driver’s moped (he later got very angry with me when I demanded he stick to our agreed-on fee) and traveled the last three kilometers to the mountain, which is now a park with a 50 cent entrance fee. Little about this place has been left in its natural state, and I started trudging up the stone staircase to the pagoda, passing the trinket and drink stalls and small shrines along the way. Old woman in flip-flops and people in smart clothes were all walking up…the Vietnamese are not put off by a sweaty, steep climb like the Americans! Despite all the sideline attractions and many climbers, the hike is still peaceful, with wide shaded steps and glimpses of views every once in a while.
Like the other park I visited Saturday, this one had many fake animals (and a few captured ones in a small zoo, like a long, fat python and an alligator). Many native mammals in Vietnam are endangered -- at least 42 mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Vietnam. But at least we don’t have to worry about preserving fake ones or their habitat.
Here’s the pagoda. The trail continues to the summit, which I'll do another day. You can't see it in this photo, but many of the pilgrims (or tourists) are hanging out on the benches around the shrine, somewhat spent from the hundreds of steps just taken.
The inside. In the last picture, you might be able to make out that the monk is smoking a cigarette while he fiddles with the statues.
That is a neon halo behind the buddha's head that flashes different colors every few seconds.
At first I thought it was odd the monk was smoking inside the pagoda, but then I saw this Buddha on the mountain.
It seems to me he is the Buddha of vice? He is also wearing hipster sneakers and his daemon looks like it wants to eat some small creature nearby.Some of the people along the route asked me to take their photo.
These little girls put their fingers in their cheeks when I asked them to smile.
I met this puppy on the stairs.
And I took a picture of these chicks hanging out together on some beach chairs.
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