20240504 Sat Suoi Ngo Temple, Nha Trang & Cooking!
Today it was a mix of some experimental cooking & a small adventure on the new bike!
It is a used Yamaha Exciter 150cc 5 gear in Nha Trang for much needed mobility & mostly the weekend escapades. Seeing her orange saffron color I could not resist sealing the deal without seeing any other options last week. So ... it's the orange color which refuses to leave me here also!
My colleague Mr Hoàng Khánh Vũ's wife Mrs Nguyễn Bích Ngọc had kindly given me three smooth gourd vegetable fruits with spring onions from her mother's farm. I had to do some good to this precious gift of her. I hadn't made a smooth gourd curry myself before, but with my wife's persuasive dictation as always, I could put up an acceptable show.
After a quick fix of mobile gps holder on the new bike, me & Khanh headed to our destination of the new mountain 13 kms away. Today’s expedition was to survey the new mountain and new pagoda for our alternate visits to CoTien hill & this new one.
Technically it is a two wheeler road – where not all riders will dare thumping their machines. Climbing the uphill mountain alley, steeping close to 45 degree angle at times, full of rubble & sand, loosened here and there, with nobody around – was not really easy for my 150cc bike to handle. Thanks to my 95+ kg mass & our medium built Khanh, I had to cruise my way up only in the first gear; sometimes half clutch & thus stressing it’s timid 150cc heart continuously for about half an hour.
But reaching almost atop at the pagoda made all the fatigue of this hardship go away just in a second. A 20 something smiling nun greeted us happily and offered home grown mangoes, oranges, custard apples & dried bananas. The dried bananas were a special treat for which I did not shy away at all. We Indians attach a great value to the food offered to the god & so we were fortunate to have that ‘prasad’ just by showing up there.
The absolute peace and isolation are the answers why all good temples are located away from the hustle bustle of the mankind. All-over south east Asia, I find the tradition of all the Buddhist temples occupying a high spot on a nearby mountain & the deity blessing the whole city from there - is a great testimony to the wisdom of it’s founding fathers.
Getting down the alleyway was actually the equally difficult task, but by blessings of the place I could manage to come down in one piece, without skidding away on the same severe slopes – again in the first gear all the while. I patted myself 10 times for not buying an ‘auto gear’ vehicle, but a geared one and realized the importance of 1st gear for cruising down such slopes.
All in all, though our little adventure is a good success, this place can’t really be an alternative to the CoTien hill as here we have hardly any path to trek & with it’s road condition, it is not a group destination for sure. But that is good in a way. Because the deity up there likes to stay peaceful & isolated as it stands now.
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