Today is the second day of the year of cat. I post this painting by Bob to welcome Tet, like last year I had a tiger mum and baby :-).I spent the day visiting three pagodas in Hanoi. Last year I went with my mum but this year I took my son. The weather was so wonderful: sunny and warm. The streets were not very crowded, easy for me to travel up to West Lake.
It is a tradition that Vietnamese people visit pagodas and temples at the beginning of the new lunar year to pray for a good year for their families. So if you travel past pagodas and temples in Hanoi you will see so many people here: old and young, men and women, and even some foreigners. I did not buy any flowers or something to pray. I went for simple: just put new money notes on the altars and pressed two hands in front of the breast and bowed and prayed. First, we went to the pagoda near Linh Dam. After that we headed for Quan Su Pagoda downtown. And we continued to West Lake to visit Tran Quoc pagoda on the lake. We ended our trip by taking a motorbike tour round Hoan Kiem Lake and stopped at Fanny ice cream shop. Bob did not want to walk so I missed a good exercise :-(. Here are some photos we took on the pagoda trip.
