Happy Birthday Buddha!

This past week was Buddha's birthday and we were in the traditional town of Hoi An this weekend to celebrate. Actually, it wasn't nearly that intentional. With a little dumb luck, we just happened to be in one of the best spots possible to celebrate Buddha's 2639th birthday.

Instead of trying to write all of this up, I feel like this week's post would be much better in the form of a photo-essay. After all, it was a very visual weekend so I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

First of all, Hoi An is an old trading town in central Vietnam. The fact that it was a trade hub means that all sorts of nationalities and interests were at play here during the 16th and 17th centuries. As a result, each group built their own temples, meeting halls and shrines. Different variations of Chinese traders, Japanese monks and even a smattering of European merchants built their own meeting halls and places of worship. Today, all of these buildings make for a very eclectic town center. 

And that beautiful town center was looking especially good for Buddha's birthday. One of the traditional symbols of Buddha's birth is baby Buddha walking on seven lotus flowers. Legend has it, that lotus flowers bloomed in the footprints of Buddha's first seven steps. Most towns acknowledge this with a poster or maybe even a little shadowbox scene, but Hoi An exploited its geography by installing seven huge lotus floats in the river. We must have seen at least five wedding photo shoots happening around the lotuses Saturday evening. 

We were suckers and bought a few paper lanterns as soon as the ladies came out on the bridge to sell them. Being amateurs, we got caught up in the moment and lowered our lanterns well before dark. 

Our lanterns may not have added to stunning effect of seeing hundreds of glowing lights out on the river at night, but at least our lanterns were the first to start making their course towards the sunset. 

We actually ended up buying some more later that night to join in the fun. 

After a few hours hanging out near the river, we made our way further inland back towards our hotel. About a block before we got there, we found this temple decked out for Buddha's birthday and obviously ready to party. It turned out that we had already missed the main event, but we met some younger members who were lining up dozens of bicycles, attaching Buddhist flags and flowers to the baskets. We started talking to them and found out that they were organizing a bike ride around town the following morning. Would we like to come?

 Heck yeah we want to come along!

Sunday morning, we joined probably about 100 other bicyclists for an early morning Buddha-birthday-bike ride around the city. Even though we started at about 6:30, it was painfully hot and we took lots of breaks. By 8am, we were totally drenched and had made it back to the riverfront where we had played with lanterns the night before. 

The river was transformed. Thousands of locals lined the banks to watch the dragon boat races. 

This was actually one of my favorite parts of the day. Judging by the enthusiasm of some of the spectators (who slapped their paddles on the water to splash the teams and sprayed hoses into the boats' path) I had to assume that some amount of money was on this race. Or, I suppose, more importantly, Buddhist bragging rights. 

About eight boats raced in the first heat. As they approached the bridge, they prepared for the hairpin turn around a flag. 

This was a tricky maneuver and the teams had obviously been practicing. Whoever could make the tighter turn got the inside track and was better positioned for the sprint back to the finish line. But beware! One team learned the hard way that being too aggressive on the turn can cause the boat to take on too much water and....

Womp, womp. This boat sank so fast, I couldn't even capture it on camera before it went down. Judging by the way the one guy is holding his paddle, I don't think they realized what had happened until they started treading water. 

But everyone was fine, and after the race ended, they were even able to salvage the sunken boat and finish the race. 

...and the bike ride continued. I know the hat looks silly, but man, my head would have been a ripe tomato if I hadn't worn it. These hats are highly practical and should definitely be adopted in Texas. 

Fast forward about 36 hours and we're back in Saigon celebrating the last day of Buddha's birthday. I went to one of the largest temples in town for one last night of singing, dancing and reflecting upon the Buddha's teachings. For the first hour or so, one of the monks spoke to a congregation busting the seams of the temple. We had arrived early and so got seats up near the front, but by the end of the night, people were spilling out onto the street trying to get a glimpse of the show. Eventually, the sermon turned into dancing and singing, which was a little easier to comprehend. The sermon was actually really good for practicing my Vietnamese. The speaker spoke very slowly and used pretty simple constructions so that I was able to understand maybe 20% of what he said. If by next year I can understand 50%, I would consider that a great success. 

As my parting gift to celebrate Buddha's birthday with you all, I leave you "Monk on Rollerblades". We found this little guy rolling around the halls behind the main congregation room. My initial reaction was to laugh, but I realize now how meditative it must actually be to roll back and forth down a hallway. If you aren't enlightened enough to walk on lotus blossoms, you may as well enjoy the journey on a sweet pair of rollerblades.