Having covid... Not alone though: it seems like half of Ho Chi Minh City is coughing and sneezing. Thankfully, I have some photos from my Saigon-2024 archive to share while I recover.
St Francis Xavier Church also known as Cha Tam Church, built in 1900 for the Chinese Christian community of Cholon. It is the most iconic place to me, love the streets around this church. One of my favorite places for photo walks.
Its style is Western but the gates have the Chinese appearance, and that duality surprisingly looks harmonious.
There is an aaamazing market behind the church, my favorite market in Saigon.
They were having a traffic jam in the aisle of the market - too many motorbikes. And I was trying to walk behind stalls... That's how the image happened. :)
At some point, I decided to visit Museum of Ho Chi Minh City hoping that I would learn something about the history of the city. It turned out that the amount of propaganda there was off the charts.
Nevertheless, there were a few curious artifacts of the local art.
That room dedicated to Vietnamese theater looked just gorgeous.
I visited half of dozens of Chinese temples in Cholon, some of them more than once.
Colorful houses with much red and gold, with rich decoration. If these Chinese temples aren't the first in your life, their appearance might seem to be predictable to you.
Focusing on details is what I recommend in these temples: characters, animals, ancient decorations, mysterious hieroglyphs - a lot of fantastic details.
This one resembles the paintings of Henri Rousseau, love it.
You can also find amazing details on the go, like this:
A mysterious decoration on a regular residential house in Cholon.
And that's the exterior of Ben Thanh market.
I usually don't take images of food in the streets since it usually looks simple, untidy, and poorly-lit. But when I saw these shells, I couldn't help but photograph the stall reminding me of a collection of marine biologist.
At last, people.
Each person is a wonderful decoration for the city. There are many of them in Saigon! 😀
More stories from Southeast Asia are ahead! Check out my previous posts on my personal Travelfeed or Worldmappin map.
I took these images with a Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 in May-July 2024 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.