Vietnamese Temples

The Vietnamese don't appear to be as religious as some cultures, like the Balinese for example, but I have seen some beautiful, fascinating and interesting places of worship during my visit.

I visited the Cao Dai Holy See which is the great temple for the Cao Dai religion.  I think it is the most colourful temple I've ever seen. The Cao Dai religion was founded in 1926 and they draw philosophies and beliefs from almost every major religion in the world, including Buddhism, Spiritualism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

The temple itself has a church-like front, mosque-like middle and pagoda at the end.

The whole building is watched over by the Devine eye (look on the inside of the triangles in the windows).

There are approximately 2 million followers in the world today, the worshippers at this site pray for 90 minutes 4 times a day (midnight, 6am, noon and 6pm).

It was a beautiful building, inside and out.

Next, I encountered this beautiful pagoda on my trip to the Mekong Delta.

It was also colourful, but more impressive were the three massive Buddha:

Standing

Sleeping

Laughing

The monks here also offer homes and education to disabled and needy children.

I also visited one of the larger pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City, the Jade Emperor Pagoda.

There were hundreds of turtles in this turtle soup (hopefully not actually turtle soup, which was on the menu in lots of places).

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh is most impressive from the outside, as all of the stone was imported from France when it was built in the 1880's. I also liked the Virgin Mary with her bowling ball and white dove/pigeon sheltering from the rain.