After spending only around an hour wandering through the colourful packed lanes of Binh Tay Market, and cruising through the countless little passageways, we were ready to move on and explore a few of the other attractions in Cholon.
Because Saigon’s Chinatown is so spread out, and since the city doesn’t exactly have nice wide pedestrian sidewalk system, it’s not all that convenient to walk around.
But Alvin and I like to walk, so we decided to walk to some of the famous temples and churches in Cholon, of coarse you can choose to jump in a taxi or on the back of a motorbike to reach your destination.
Located within Cholon, is Cha Tam Church, and it took us about 30 minutes to walk there from the market in the hot weather of the sun!
When we were arriving at the Cha Tam Church, there were a group of tourists too. The tour guide was talking about the history of the Church. Officially known as the Church of St. Francisco Xavier, was completed in the year of 1902.
Generally the church has Gothic design, the same as European church but it still has the Chinese culture style. The name of the church is written in Chinese scripts. The roof is covered with ying and yang tiles. Two side of the ross has two carps. The tops of the church is put lotuses. Two scripts lines on two sides of the gate are written in Chinese scripts.
The four pillars in the main worship place is painted red colour, which doesn’t have in the Christian churches. The place where hang the Jesus Christ statue has 2 script lines written in Chinese. It was like a church but decorated like a Chinese temple style.
Located in the centre area of the church compound, is a St. Mary stature constructed under a Chinese style roof. There are bronze crafted plate which indicated the history of the church behind the statue of St. Mary.
Both sides are single storey and double storey buildings, which looked more like the quarters for the church helpers.
There are a church operated an orphanage and a school in the church ground. We can hear the children were reciting what their teacher was teaching.
We noticed that the church is still used frequently. We sat in the bench for a while, then we continue our journey.
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