Saigon in the 1930s

From Osbert Sitwell's 1939 travelogue Escape With Me! An Oriental Sketchbook, describing his arrival in Saigon harbour:

"There were, even, little crocodiles of piously-dressed, slant-eyed, yellow-faced pupils to greet the nuns, and of lay-workers to greet the monks...Only the two French-Canadians, genial but suspect as ever, were left to themselves, wildly photographing gendarmes, customs-house officials and departing passengers alike.
But as we drove into the town, it became plain that Saigon was, in fact, an achievement, unique, a French city flowering alone out of a tropical swamp in the farthest corner of Asia. Once there, within its narrow confines, it is as though, in the manner of the polite fiction adopted by embassies the world over, you stood upon the actual soil of France."

Water Dispenser Outside Church, Le Van Sy St.

One of the most touching sights in Ho Chi Minh City is the humble water dispenser many Catholic churches leave on the footpath outside. In a city where clean, drinkable water is hard to get, this is a small act of charity that is immensely useful, and, to my mind at least, quite admirable.
These dispensers are filled up with clean water throughout the day, and the thousands of people who work, travel or live on the streets of this enormous city know they can walk by and grap a cupful whenever they want it. The sign on the side says "No Charge."
This particular photograph was taken on Le Van Sy St. in Phu Nhuan, outside the beautiful Ba Chuong church.

Catholics and Christmas in Vietnam

The vast Catholic churches that serve the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City are also home to eclectic book and gift shops tucked discreetly into side buildings. Around Christmas time they pack up the usual assortment of plastic rosary beads and plaster of paris statues of the Vietnamese martyrs and turn themselves into dazzling winter wonderlands, selling cards, nativity sets and all other kinds of Christmas paraphernalia to the people of Saigon, Christian and Buddhist alike. Christmas is big business in Vietnam, and the Catholic gift shops see themselves as the rightful source of festive tawdriness in all its manifestations. Courting couples hit the Catholic churches to browse the immense stands of cards, and maybe pick up a purple plastic Christmas tree or two. If its Christmas cheer you’re after, your local church will have it in spades.
Tan Dinh church, a pastel pink masterpiece of French provincial frippery at the best of times, is transformed by late November into a riotous Noel-themed fun park. Vast plastic pine trees, their limbs heavy with snow, are hot sellers, and outside the church individual entrepreneurs set up racks and racks of Santa suits in every size – except in sizes that Santa himself would actually fit. It is not unusual to pass someone driving his motorcycle dressed in full Santa regalia – indeed, I have driven past entire families all dressed as Santa balancing on a motorbike. The laws requiring adults to wear safety helmets probably put a dampener on things a little, but the merest suggestion of a red cap and white pom pom poking coquettishly from underneath a helmet is enough to offer a tantalising suggestion of Father Christmas. The only other modification is that Santa is invariably wearing flip-flops.

Monastery Gardens - Thu Duc - Benedictine Monastery

For something a little different, I thought I would show you the gardens at the Benedictine Monastery in Thu Duc, a satellite city of Ho Chi Minh City.



Once upon a time the monastery would have been in a rural area, but these days it is really just a suburb of the enormous, amorphous metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City. It's about a 30 minute drive from my house in Tan Binh, and the taxi ride comes to about $15. Taxi drivers can NEVER find it.
There are several gardens in the monastery, all serving very different purposes.
These are the front gardens, which are packed for most of the day with Catholic lay-people waiting for confession and to receive the blessings of a monk. The monastery has a reputation for helping women to conceive, so it is quite a popular pilgrimage spot - even for people of other faiths.



There is a large working garden - which includes this fish farm. The monks grow their own food, and they also propagate cash crops - most particularly marigolds for sale during the Lunar New Year.




Out of sight of the public lie the monastery gardens proper. These are spaces for the monks to enjoy, and are normally based around a piece of statuary. These gardens are quite beautiful, and are meant to inspire meditation and prayer.

St. Andrew Dung Lac

It is always my contention that the Vietnamese (particularly in the Central and Southern regions) are a particularly religious people, and take their religion very seriously.
I also think it's interesting that Catholicism is, in fact, quite an antique spiritual tradition in Vietnam. Many assume that it arrived with the French in the 19th Century, but in fact there have been Catholics in Vietnam since the beginning of the 16th Century.
In the section of Ho Chi Minh City that I call home, vast numbers of Catholics reside, most of them descendants of Northern Catholics who fled the great persecutions of the mid 50s. There is a network of churches in the district, some of them, like the beautiful Ba Chuong church on Le Van Sy, quite enormous.
It is inside the Ba Chuong church that you can see a shrine to St. Andrew Dung Lac and his martyred companions. At various times throughout Vietnamese history the people in charge have been less than enthusiastic about Catholicism, and there are large numbers of martyrs. St. Andrew Dung-Lac is kind of the granddaddy of them all, and his feast day serves as the memorial date for 117 of the 19th century Catholic martyrs in Vietnam.
Though a shrine to these martyrs is a standard part of most church interiors, in terms of popular devotion they can't compete with Truong Buu Diep, St. Martin de Porres and, naturally, the Blessed Virgin. Shrines to these figures are ubiquitous, and more spontaneously attended.