Vietnam Part III - Temples

One of the cool things about visiting Vietnam was seeing the Buddhist temples and shrines that were scattered around the place.  I don't hold with the religion, but I really like the architecture of them.  Vietnam is (as far as I know) fairly unique in being a Communist country that doesn't outlaw religion.

A random shrine in the middle of the city - there was a crazy bustling street outside with motorbikes and honking horns everywhere, and we stepped inside the gate to a cool, green shrine that was much quieter.  Very relaxing.

Cool architecture!

Incense is a big part of the religion, and you can usually see it burning all over the place.

There were beautiful paintings outside many of the temples, like this one of a fish.

And many of them have beautiful ornate work, even on the surrounding fence.

This is the Tran Quoc Pagoda, which is the oldest in Vietnam.

Every temple complex had a little miniature rock garden like this in a pot sitting nearby - I'm not sure what the religious significance of them is (if anyone knows, please enlighten me!), but I thought they were gorgeous.  They all had rock mountains with tiny trees growing on them, and usually had temples, fishermen and water buffalo sitting on the rocks at various places.  The miniaturization was very cool.  We might try to make our own here!

My understanding is that part of Buddhism is leaving offerings at the temple, which tend to be sweet foods and drinks.  I have trouble following and understanding what is going on, because there seem to be a lot of different types of Buddhism depending on which country it's in - I have heard at various times that the offerings are to the person the temple is for, and I've also heard that it's for the ancestors.  Anyway - we walked a very long way to a special temple complex, and outside was a huge market set up to sell temple offerings.

Apparently the ancestors/person to which the temple was dedicated to really like Coke and beer.  From memory, the particular temple had something to do with some sort of venerated warrior.  Many of the other ones had choco-pies, sweet cookies/biscuits, or fruit.

One of the final places we visited was the Temple of Literature, which is the oldest university in Hanoi.  It  was again a tranquil area in the middle of the crazy city.  I loved this flower bed - I would have thought that the Chinese-style writing was too difficult to write in flowers, but apparently not! 

This is the Constellation of Literature pavilion at the Temple of Literature.  I still love the architecture.

A big thing at the temple is these turtles - apparently in the 1600s a king decided that he wanted to point out how awesome education was to everyone, so he had 116 turtles carved from stone (yes, they're all slightly different), which contain the names and birth details of graduates of the university.  Turtles are one of four holy creatures in Vietnam - they represent longevity and perfection.  If you're interested, the other holy animals are the dragon (power and nobility), unicorn (goodness and intelligence) and the phoenix (virtue and grace).

More to come in Part IV!