The Bat Pagoda

High in the old sao and dầu trees of the pagoda grounds, 30 to 40 meters above the ground, dark clusters hang from the branches. Look closer and they are not fruit, nor any kind of harvest. They are bats. Tens of thousands of them sleep upside down in the middle of the day.

This is Chùa Dơi. Its official Khmer name is Serây Tê Chô Mahatúp, which means "made by blessing and virtue."

The pagoda is dated to 1569, just 36 years after the nearby Khléang Pagoda. Both come from the time when the Khmer king Ang Chăn the First founded Buddhist pagodas for the Khmer community along the lower Hậu River. On February 12, 1999, the Ministry of Culture recognized Chùa Dơi as a National Architectural and Artistic Monument.

Yet the name everyone knows, Chùa Dơi, the Bat Pagoda, comes from the story of the colony that chose this place to nest.

Two main kinds of bats live around the pagoda, the dơi quạ, or crow bat, and the dơi ngựa, or horse bat. The Latin name of the crow bat contains the word vampyrus, which means vampire. With wings spread, hanging upside down in a tree, these bats do look eerie. But they eat fruit and do not drink blood. The name comes from their shape, not from what they eat.

Each crow bat weighs from 1 to 1.5 kilograms, about as much as a large bottle of water. Its wings stretch 1.5 meters across when open. Its fur is yellow and black. It finds its way by sight, not by ultrasound as small bats do, because it eats fruit and does not hunt insects.

By day the bats sleep, hanging from high branches with their wings wrapped around their bodies. At about half past five in the afternoon, as the sun sinks low, the colony wakes and takes off. Thousands of bats beat their wings at the same moment and spread across the sky, heading for the fruit orchards of the region to feed through the night. Many people never forget the sight. The sky over Sóc Trăng is full of bats, the wings make a rushing sound, and behind them the evening sun glows gold.

The community of monks at Chùa Dơi sees the bats as a blessing, a sign of protection from nature. They forbid the hunting of bats in the grounds and look after the old trees where the colony lives. This is an expression of the compassion of Buddhism, which reaches not only people but every living creature.

Sadly, the colony is shrinking. Before 2010, an estimated 50,000 bats lived here. After 2015, the number fell to about 10 to 20,000. Urban growth in Sóc Trăng has taken away the natural forest around the pagoda, where the bats find their food. Climate change has cut the fruit harvest in the dry season. And illegal hunting goes on, even though the pagoda forbids it.

The pagoda has one more distinctive feature, an enclosure and graves for five-toed pigs. According to a Khmer folk belief, a pig born with five toes instead of the usual four is the spirit of a person reborn. A family that raises such a pig will meet bad luck and quarrels. The remedy is to bring the pig to the pagoda, where the monks raise it and bury it when it dies. Biologically, it is a hereditary genetic mutation, a rare natural variation. But for the Khmer community it is part of a spiritual culture kept alive through many generations.

In 2007, a fire caused by an electrical short circuit broke out at the pagoda. It destroyed many ancient Buddha statues and old Khmer books. The faithful and the monks joined with the state to rebuild, and the work was finished in 2009. Most of the pagoda standing today was restored after the fire.

And even though the colony is smaller than it once was, half past five in the afternoon is still a moment found nowhere else. The sky begins to turn orange, and thousands of black wings open at once from the crowns of the old trees. Then they rise, and rise again, and scatter across the sky of Sóc Trăng like a living cloud.