Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [66]
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City |
Jade Emperor Pagoda
A few blocks northwest of the Botanical Gardens, on Mai Thi Luu, stands the Jade Emperor Pagoda, or Chua Phuoc Hai (daily 5am–7pm; free), built by the city’s Cantonese community around 1900. If you visit just one temple in town, make it this one, with its exquisite panels of carved gilt woodwork, and its panoply of weird and wonderful deities, both Taoist and Buddhist, beneath a roof that groans under the weight of dragons, birds and animals.
To the right of the tree-lined courtyard out front is a grubby pond whose occupants have earned the temple its alternative moniker of Tortoise Pagoda. Once over the threshold, look up and you’ll see Chinese characters announcing: “the only enlightenment is in Heaven” – though only after your eyes have adjusted to the fug of joss-stick smoke. A statue of the Jade Emperor lords it over the main hall’s central altar, sporting an impressive moustache, and he’s surrounded by a retinue of similarly moustached followers.
A rickety flight of steps in the chamber to the right of the main hall runs up to a balcony looking out over the pagoda’s elaborate roof. Set behind the balcony, a neon-haloed statue of Quan Am (see "Nguyen Trai and around") stands on an altar. Left out of the main hall, meanwhile, you’re confronted by Kim Hua, to whom women pray for fertility; judging by the number of babies weighing down the female statues around her, her success rate is high. The Chief of Hell resides in the larger chamber behind Kim Hua’s niche. Given his job description, he doesn’t look particularly demonic, though his attendants, in sinister black garb, are certainly equipped to administer the sorts of punishments depicted in the ten dark-wood reliefs on the walls before them.
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City |
Le Van Duyet Temple
A national hero is commemorated at the Temple of Marshal Le Van Duyet, known locally as Lang Ong and sited at the top of Dinh Tien Hoang, in the region of the city where the Gia Dinh Citadel once stood. A military mandarin and eunuch who lived around the turn of the nineteenth century, Le Van Duyet succeeded in putting down the Tay Son Rebellion, and later became military governor of Gia Dinh. Strolling around the grounds reveals the two unmarked oval mounds under which the marshal and his wife are buried. The temple itself, which stretches through three halls behind a facade decorated with unicorns assembled from shards of chinaware, is quite atmospheric. Inside, a portrait of the marshal stands on an altar, in front of which is a massive and ancient pair of tusks. The temple receives a steady stream of visitors paying their respects with burning incense, and the ringing of a brass bell adds to the pious mood. On the first day of the eighth lunar month, to coincide with the marshal’s birthday, a theatre troupe dramatizes his life; and there’s more activity around Tet, when crowds of pilgrims gather to ask for safekeeping in the forthcoming year.
Ho Chi Minh City and around | The City |
Cho Lon
The dense cluster of streets comprising the Chinese ghetto of CHO LON was once distinct from Saigon, though linked to it by the five-kilometre-long umbilical cord of Tran Hung Dao. The distinction was already somewhat blurred by 1950, when Norman Lewis found the city’s Chinatown “swollen so enormously as to become its grotesque Siamese twin”, and the steady influx of refugees into the city during the war years saw to it that the two districts eventually became joined by a swathe of urban development. Even so, a short stroll around Cho Lon (whose name, meaning ”big market”, couldn’t be more apposite) will make clear that, even by this city’s standards, the mercantile mania here is breathtaking. The largest of Cho Lon’s many covered markets are Tran Phu’s An Dong, built in 1991, and the more recent but equally vast An Dong II. If you’re looking to sightsee rather than shop, then historic Binh Tay (see "Binh Tay Market and around") is of far more interest.