Silk Village & Thay Pagoda, 10/4

On Saturday of our first week in Hanoi, we headed for two sites just outside the city. Our first stop was Van Phuc, the silk village. There are a number of these "handicraft villages" around Hanoi. Virtually the whole town is dedicated to a particular cottage industry. In addition to the silk village, there are ceramic, paper products, wood carving, and furniture making villages, plus others. Much of the silk found in Hanoi shops comes from Van Phuc.

At the entrance to Van Phuc, there is a small pagoda, with a pond of lotus flowers in front.


The only way to make real silk is still from the cacoons of silk worms. They feed the worms on mulberry leaves, then convince them to spin their cacoons on wooven frames.


The cacoons are spun into thread.





Then the thread is turned into silk cloth on semi-automated looms. Usually the looms are humming away when we visit, but this morning there was a power outage that sent all the workers home.

We still got a tour of the factory, and an explanation of how the weaving takes place. Most of the looms are close to a hundred years old, but they still keep them in running order. The wooden scrolls shown in the right part of the picture below are fed into the loom, and govern what the pattern will be for the fabric being woven. The operator has to push the bobbin back and forth that holds the weaving thread.

Perhaps the reason they are prone to power outages is the state of the electrical supply system. I took this picture in Van Phuc, but the system is the same everywhere.

Many shops set up gas generators for temporary power, so it was business as usual. Since most shops do not take credit cards anyway, the power outage did not slow down transactions.

Here are Jared and Andrew trying to pick out a good power tie for back home.

Diana is telling Tom that this tie is definitely him.

Josh in the meantime is getting to know the language partners.

And Jared has figured out that shopping is hard work.

By the time we left the silk villages, everyone knew the language partners better.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant, where they defined the word fresh. Several chickens were rounded up out back, and promptly killed, plucked, and cooked. This is a fairly common practice in areas where they don't want to keep everything refrigerated. When the chickens came out, most of the parts were still there, including the feet and heads. The Vietnamese consider the feet a delicacy, so we deferred to the language partners.

Our afternoon stop was at the Thay Pagoda. The Pagoda is several hundred years old, but the buildings are less than a hundred. Even though the temple is made out of ironwood, the humid weather in Vietnam takes a toll over time.

The Thay Pagoda has numerous detailed Buddha statues. At one side of the entrance there is a friendly Buddha (shown), and on the other side a warrior Buddha.

The guilded mural depicts the life and incarnations of Buddha.

The multi-armed Buddha, which is female, represents a guardian or protectoress.

Thay Pagoda is located on a lake, and is nestled into karst (limestone) outcroppings that can be seen from far away. The building in the lake is a puppet theater stage that they use only three days a year during the festival of the third lunar month. Water puppetry supposedly started in this area.

Another view of the stage, with an elderly women spreading rice straw to dry.



A fairly short climb gets you to the top of the karst formation, and another series of small pagodas. The view from here is spectacular, but as you can see it was quite hazy during our visit. The air pollution in and around Hanoi is an increasing problem. I can tell the difference from two years ago. Too many motorbikes with no emissions controls.



Near the summit was this female Buddha, representing wisdom and active compassion.

On her way back to the bus Jill picked up another young buddie.







Everyone was ready to take him home with us.

After another busy week, everyone was ready to enjoy their Sunday off.