Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa Charity for September 2015 at Chuia Linh Quang.
Chuia Linh Quang is a Pagoda on the outskirts of Nha Trang. It is a reasonable size Pagoda with approximately 35 monks coming and going. The youngest at the moment is seven years old.
This Pagoda supports the people in this very poor district. Every weekend the Pagoda has two different programs where on Saturday the older residents can come and pray/ meditate, receive lunch and talk about life and on Sunday it is the younger peoples turn.
We were able to help on the Sunday. Unfortunately the Master was not there but we will catch up another time. His second in charge did a wonderful job.
With the help of Hien, I went to local markets on the Saturday and bought up on noodles, 10 kg of Tofu, about 30kgs of various vegetables, 20 kg of watermelon, 4kgs of dried mushrooms and 50 bags of fake meat.
We hired a 16 seater bus and 13 of us along with the food piled in. The roads were interesting after recent rain and of course the driver got lost. We turned up, unloaded and started peeling and chopping. There was lots of laughter as we all joined together to prepare the food.
We had a few chefs. We had the boys cooking much to the delight of the ladies.
Had the world’s largest mortar and pestle going, this required serious muscle action, which was being used to pulverize tofu to mix with wood ear mushrooms which were then deep fried.
There were a large variety of dishes made all very tasty. Saw a great wood fired rice steamer. The local ladies do a fantastic job cooking very tasty dishes. Whilst we were preparing and cooking there was chanting and meditation happening. We did have a bit of supervision from the younger monks who were fascinated with us.
We even had an apprentice with the cleanup. She was having so much fun with the water.
When the food was ready everyone assembled and in silence we selected what we wanted to eat and all sat in the temple together. We had a prayer then we ate in silence. When we were finished the monk in charge talked about life and problems. Then they invited us to say a little about Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa and why we were doing charity. They thanked us by singing two songs. It was a lovely morning. We fed about 80 people but had so much fun doing it.
I know we will be back soon. Thank you to the great staff from Pure Vietnam Beauty and Spa, wonderful friends as well as some of the people who I teach English to. Teamwork was excellent, cooking was great and we got to meet some wonderful people. An all round fantastic Sunday.
