After our visit to the Ben Thanh Market, we just go along the road and headed to the Mariamman Hindu Temple. The sky seems quite dark as it was around 5.30pm only, it just look like 7.30pm in Malaysia time.
Mariamman Hindu Temple is a sacred Hindu Temple dedicated to the goddess of the Rain ‘Mariamman’. This temple was built in the late 19th century by traders coming from India and has been well preserved.
This complex is the only Hindu temple in Saigon and is believed to have miraculous powers giving luck and wealth to its visitors. Entrance to the temple is free of charge and can be visited from 07:00 – 19:00.
The outer wall of the Temple has a collection of interesting statues of different gods and goddesses like Mariamman, Vishnu, Brahma and Ganesha. The main hall of the complex (The Rajagopuram) stands twelve metres tall and inside you find a well maintained statue of Mariamman flanked by her protectors ‘Maduraiveeran’ and ‘Pechiamman’.
The visitors have to take off the shoes if would like to enter the Mariamman Hindu Temple and dress appropriately. To favour the goddess of the rain, the visitors can also take some offerings such as joss sticks, jasmine, lilies and gladioli. These can be bought in front of the entrance.
I saw something interesting in the temple. Some faithful followers of the goddess of the Rain ‘Mariamman’ would stand still in front of a stone wall with their faces faced into the arch of the decorative opening, with both hands put left and right on the wall, and they were murmuring something.
It was most probably their sincere prayers or the confessions to the goddess. This was new to me, as I never see this type of practice or rituals before.
Well, we left the temple after we walked one round and observed the decorative ornaments features and architecture of the temple. To be honest, I felt kind of awkward as I am the only visitor that was taking the photos.
Anyway we have a group selfie before we left the place.
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