Vietnam: Perfume Pagoda (Part 2) and an Accident

Although I am a Manly Man, I had already been convinced by the tour guide to purchase a one-way ticket on the cable-car so I caught it back down the mountain instead of walking.

It's quite possibly the most exciting cable-car I have ever been in.  To picture what it was like, combine the following ingredients:

1.  Vietnam safety standards
2.  Cable-car speed set to Turbo
3.  4 large wasps buzzing around in the cab
4.  Tiny openable windows that aren't big enough for the wasps to find and escape

Ha ha the joke is on you!  There are no safety standards.

Needless to say - I didn't have too much time to relax and enjoy the view but it was actually better than walking as you can see quite far across the mountain range on the way down,  and you get to see the pagoda trail from above snaking it's way upward.

The view only makes them angrier -
wasps are afraid of heights because they have small wings.  

Once back at the bottom, we take a quick peek at the nifty old temple there complete with badass warrior statues before hopping back on the boat for a leisurely ride back to the minivan.

They burn one incense stick for every wasp victim of the month.

Partway along the trip back to Hanoi, we come to a sudden halt.  One car ahead of us there is a crowd of motorcyclists blocking the road in the middle of the village we are passing through.  It seems like we won't be moving for a while so we get out to investigate.

In the middle of the road lie two motorbikes, and two bodies.  A middle aged and an elderly woman have had a collision.  One of them seems to be alive but bloody and somebody is watching over them intently - the other one is motionless and drenched in blood, and nobody seems to be giving them any attention.  After a couple of minutes an arm moves so they're both still alive for now.

Nobody is allowed to move the accident victims until the police arrive to see what happened.  Eventually some policemen arrive, and the women are hastily lifted onto the back of motorbikes, perched between two people and whisked off to what I hope will be a hospital.  Hopefully they didn't have any spinal or neck injuries or it could be permanent the way they were handled like that.

Kind of like Tom Green - Not funny.

ProTip:  Don't get involved in an accident in Vietnam - it could take a quite while to get medical attention, and they won't touch you until the police arrive.





More photos can be viewed here on Flickr