Thien Hau Temple (Chùa Bà Thiên Hậu) 15 Nov 2017

For our final stop in Cholon, we headed over to the well known Thien Hau Temple, another Taoist temple in Saigon. Just a few steps away, we saw a typical shop selling all the Lion Dance accessories.

There was a vendor selling pigeons just in front of the temple, for the Chinese are to believe that release the captive pigeons and set them free is a good deed ritual in Buddhism and Taoism.

Thien Hau temple was built in 1760 to honour Mazu the ‘Lady of the Sea’ and when we enter through the iron gate we saw massive stone incense burners in front of the entrance of Mazu’s altar.

The exterior is beautifully designed with the traditional curvy roof on which small porcelain figures are standing symbol for themes from Chinese religion and legends.

From the outside, the temple looked incredibly old and dark from years of being weathered. Honestly it didn’t look amazing.

The entrance wall face was well weathered, rather unmaintained (but this did also give it an ancient feel), and it had almost a haunted feeling to look at.

However, as soon as we step inside, the beauty of the temple, mostly through the intricate details and carvings, is revealed. Inside, it was much larger and not nearly as ornate with gold, although it was still well decorated.

In front of the main shrine at Thien Hau Temple was a courtyard filled with burning incense.

Another highlight were the giant coils of incense that burn slowly, hanging from the ceiling, and filling the temple and atmosphere with smoke. The entire temple seemed to be rising in smoke.

Some people that visited the temple offered sticks of incense, while others purchased the big coils, lit them, and hung them from the ceiling.

The interior has colourful dioramas decorating the roof by representing scenes from the nineteenth century in a Chinese city.

Besides this, the most prominent visible interior design items are the three statues of the ‘Lady of the Sea’ that dominate the main altar.

Another part of Thien Hau Temple that was interesting to see were the intricately carved sculptures within the top facades of the building.

They were colourful, but weathered, and had accumulated years and years of incense smoke, making the sculptures look ancient and dusted in black soot.

When visiting make sure you take your time to look at all the small corners this temple has, as there are many sculptures, statues and artworks to discover.

There were few groups of tourists after we have arrived at the temple, and most of them were from Asia countries, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.

We quickly snapped a few group selfie before we left the temple. We decided to took a taxi and headed to the FITO (Museum of Traditional Medicine).