During my visit to Vietnam, I took a tour of the Perfume Pagoda. This building is part of the
Huong Temples complex of Buddhist temples situated in the Huong Tich mountains close to Hanoi. The temples are a popular tourist attraction for Vietnamese citizens, in particular, rather than for foreigners, which meant they were especially interesting for me to visit. I visited the temples during the low season. Visitor numbers were even lower due to the ongoing Coronavirus crisis. As such, my tour group was only nine people, only three of whom were Vietnamese citizens. Despite this fact, the people at the temple complex were very accommodating. I was amazed by the Huong temples. We were only able to visit three of the temples because it would take days of mountain trekking in order to visit all of them, though there were some cable cars.
I learned about Buddhist religious traditions. Many of the Vietnamese visitors stopped in the temples to pray or to donate a variety of goods. Additionally, many people left money throughout the temples for good luck. I learned that most visitors bring offerings to the temples and often they buy some of the rice candies available for sale in the nearby stalls for that purpose. We also visited the Huong Tich cave where we could see many of these offerings.
