Friday 15.9.23.

Back in Hanoi for our last week at a different hotel just to mix it up a bit. Our plan is to rest and relax before we have to return to home and work.

Sunday 17.9.23

We walked to the Tran Quoc Pagada which is the oldest pagoda in the city, originally constructed in the sixth century. Its located on West lake which is the largest lake in Hanoi city. As we were walking there were people fishing and catching decent size fish, some about 14" long. When they caught them they put them in little cages in the water too keep them fresh. I asked one of our tour guides why there are no ducks on the lakes? He said "if it moves we eat it". 😀

Monday 18.9.23

We decided to do one more tour to fill in some time while still in Hanoi. Choosing a visit to an incense making village. It took 1.5 hrs to drive out to the village, partly due to Monday morning peak hour traffic in Hanoi. Once we arrived the tour guide took us through the steps to prepare incense sticks. I never imagined it was so involved and labour intensive.

Different families work on each stage and sell the product onto another family for the next stage to be done.

Firstly bamboo is collected from the forrest, its cut in half, cleaned, packed together and put in water to soak for 4 - 6 months. This cures the bamboo to make it strong.

The next step is cutting it into the thin pieces - some families do this by hand, and others do it by machine. The machine cut stickes are nice and round, where as the hand cut ones could be any shape, mostly triangular.

When gathered into bundles its sorted and graded by lifting and banging on the floor which makes the thin light sticks to pop out, so they can be pulled and discarded. The sticks are cut to size, put in a machine for 8 hours to rub all the "fluffy" bits off, then put through a blower machine to completely dry it.

Then it heads off to the dye machine to put the colour on the sticks, which looks really messy, even the dog was pink! The sticks are bundles and put in the sun to dry before the actually burning incense paste is rolled on by a machine, dried again, packaged, and sent of for sale or export. Vietnam only burns incense for ceremonial purposes, we burn it mostly for the smell.

Now when I burn incense at home, I will have a greater appreciation for the effort put into the manufacture of it!