Our day at Hanoi Pagoda Orphanage

On Saturday we were lucky to visit a buddhist orphanage on the Red River in Hanoi. Duc, our guide and translator, organized a visit at the last minute to the orphanage with the help of his university teacher.

The 'orphanage' or 'monastery' (we're not quite sure how to refer to it) is off the well-trodden tourist path, and the people were most warm and hospitable.

The monks/'sisters' who run the place were very generous with their time and provided us with insight into both the running of the orphanage and described some of their needs and objectives - including the need for rice and baby formula, and their plans for expanding the orphanage.

We were very impressed with the environment and the level of care provided to the infants and older kids. There are approximately 50 orphans, ten of them are younger than 12 months old.Their orphanage is basically run like a big family. They also 'adopt' adults of all ages, mostly women as far as we could see, who become like surrogate parents and grandparents to the kids. The adults take great care of the children, and seem to spend their entire days looking after the babies in particular; playing with them, touching them, singing to them, feeding them, changing diapers, talking to them etc, and appear to never be out of earshot. The babies trust and adore their caregivers, and while we were there the babies never took their eyes off their 'mothers.'

One of the problems in many orphanages around the world is that the children don't get the level of love and attention required for healthy physical and psychological development, often resulting in problems such as delayed development and attachment problems. Vietnamese orphanages appear to stand alone in this regard, and from our experience at this particular orphanage, it is not surprising at all. We all left the orphanage with a smile, a rarity after an orphanage visit.



Here is a short clip of the babies with their care-givers and the head of the monastery




Here is a short clip of some of the older kids playing on the bank of the river



The monastery is currently undergoing a building project to add more sleeping quarters so that they can accomodate more children, as well as more monks when they have seminar-type things in the summer. They began building about a month ago, but so far only have the funds to build a single floor. They are in the process of trying to raise one billion Vietnamese Dong (approx USD $60,000) so that they can add another two floors. Please contact us for more details if you are interested in helping out.

Here is a short clip discussing the building project.



We also got some fantastic still pictures, we'll post them shortly.