Rip-off brands are tricky sometimes. I didn't even notice that my water was "Aquabigsea" and not "Aquafina" til I was almost done drinking it. Another sidenote, winter melon tea is delicious!
We took a day trip to the Perfume Pagoda on Thursday. Guided tours seem to be the only way to visit the places we want to see, so we went with it. The poorly air-conditioned van was tolerable, but we felt even worse about the lady who rowed us and 3 other adults down the river for over an hour to get to the pagoda. The temperature was 38 degrees celcius.
The Perfume Pagoda is the name used to refer to a group of over 15 buddhist temples that are built near a town. At some point outsiders translated the first word of the town's name as "Perfume", which is where the name comes from. We were only able to visit 2 of the temples because of time and heat. One was in a cave that looks like the mouth of a dragon. The other was a pagoda where a prayer service was being held while we visited. Our guide said that Perfume Pagoda is one of the holiest buddhist temples in Vietnam and that 3.5 million people visit every year during a 3 month long festival. There are up to 30,000 people visiting each day during the week, and 60,000 on the weekends. Since it was not festival season, we enjoyed relative peace and quiet.
