Incense Making

Whilst on our tour of the countryside outside of Hue, between tombs and pagodas, we drove through a village that was a center for production of incense sticks.  Incense is a pretty huge part of daily life in Vietnam and they use a whole lot of it.  

The village has all of these beautiful, colorful displays of incense sticks lining the main drag:

You could also watch the ladies actually making the joss sticks in front of you, which was pretty cool. I never really thought about the process before, but basically the woman was rolling a scented paste (the big brown blob on the left) with a paddle until flat and then rolling it onto an individual stick until she got the right amount mushed on there.  I found a video showing it in action... check it out.  Neat.