Visiting pagodas to pray for a peaceful and prosperous year is a tradition followed with fervor by Vietnamese devotees.
On New Year’s Eve, after ritual offerings to ancestors, people put on new clothes and head for the pagodas. Most walk to the pagoda nearest their house, but there are those who visit bigger, more famous ones.
The New Year surge sees major pagodas like Lang Ong Ba Chieu, Vinh Nghiem, Ngoc Hoang and Tran Hung Dao in Ho Chi Minh City crowded with so many people that some of them actually return, unable to jostle through the throngs.
Ngoc from District 7 went to the Lang Ong Ba Chieu in district Binh Thanh on the last day of the Lunar New Year, and spent a hour to park her motorbike. The pagoda was full of incense smoke. Despite all the difficulties, she made it through and said her prayers with a sense of achievement.
In some religious places, devotees have been asked not to burn incense in the main hall, and others have asked that they use one incense stick per person, like the Mot Cot Pagoda in Thu Duc district, Hoang Phap Pagoda in Hoc Mon District. In Phong Phu temple in District 9, the small main hall was full of incense smoke and crammed with visitors seeking astrological predictions.
Another feature of the pagoda visits during the New Year is the profusion of people seeking alms who sit or lie down in front of the holy places.
Amidst all this piety, though, is also the phenomenon of pickpockets using the occasion to relieve some unlucky devotees of their wallets or other precious belongings.
