Sunday, 28Jan07

Highlights: Catholic cathedral, Buddhist monestary and monument, 10 hours of driving, Hoi An

I forgot to mention how many Catholic churches we passed on the road yesterday. I was surprised, because I thought Vietnam was predominantly a Buddhist country. It is, but according to Wikipedia, 12% of Vietnamese are Roman Catholic + 2% Protestant. A lot of them seem to live along the road between HCMC and Nha Trang, because for several miles there seemed to be a new church every 200 meters.
We visited a beautiful cathedral on a hill in downtown Nha Trang this morning. The 4 girls were all brought up Catholic, so if we thought about it ahead of time, we could have gotten out the door in time for mass. Oh well. Maybe next week. We got there just as mass was finishing up. By the looks of the parking lot, everyone showed up on scooters. Walking around the Cathedral was immensely impressive though. The stain-glass windows wrote the saints names in French, so I’ll assume the heavy Catholicism is another vestige of 95 years of colonialism. Around the outside was an impressive array of statues for the saints. A rounded, cobble-stone street was carved cork-screw fashion into the side of the hill. Along the edges were names of deceased. I’m not sure if they were buried there, or just had remembrance plaques placed there… some were over 100 years old.