Perfume Pagoda, Viet Nam

Hi everyone! Hope you didnt miss me much this past week :P  But I just really cant figure out how does time fly so fast and I just cant find the right time to post some cards here =/
Well, it is a chilly Sunday morning, so I better use the time while having some coffee, before I get stuck with some errands again....
And I have received such amazing cards lately, it is a real pity I am not able to post them all...but at least it is always nice to start somewhere....and today Ill start with this lovely card dear Jo sent me from Viet Nam

The card shows the Perfume Pagoda, which is actually a shrine on the limestone rocks of Huong Son Mountain and the only way to reach it is by these boats on this river (the Yen river). It is considered as a very important pilgrimage for the Vietnamese and they are  expected to do it at least once.

It is a really lovely card....the colours feels so calm, and give me the impression that this was taken on an early misty morning with that breeze in the air....the only thing you could hear is the sound of the boats 'cutting through' the water and the soft splashes of the paddles. So nice.....

And a very important part of this card are the stamps!

You probably know that this year is the Year of the Rabbit and hence many post offices (will) issue stamps related to that....I highly doubt Macedonia will, coz for example last year, when everyone was issuing stamps with the Year of the Tiger, Macedonia stayed aside from it all...but anyways. As I said, this is the Year of the Rabbit...BUT...in Viet Nam, and ONLY in Viet Nam, it is the Year of the Cat!!! Viet Nam follows the Chinese zodiac for all signs except for the Rabbit (and if the source is to be trusted, in Viet Nam, the Ox is also replaced with a Buffalo). There are several legends of why Viet Nam has the cat and not the rabbit, but despite the fact I love legends, the explanation is most probably a linguistic one, according to which The Chinese word for rabbit is 'mao', which sounds like 'meo' in Vietnamese, where it means cat. As the sound of the word changed, so did its meaning.  
The year of the cat is supposed to be a free-of-stress one.
And these are the two cute cat stamps that this issue consists of.

Thank you so much again Jo!