Thien Hau, the sea goddess temple in Cho Lon

Thien Hau is a Cantonese temple in the middle of Saigon's Chinatown. People who had just survived a sea crossing built it for the goddess they credited with it.

Who is the goddess?

Mazu, called Thien Hau here, a woman of tenth-century Fujian said to have calmed storms and guided sailors home. Fishing communities along the south China coast venerated her first, and every Chinese migration by sea carried her further.

Cho Lon's Cantonese congregation built this temple in the 1760s for exactly that reason, and about 400,000 people of Chinese descent live in the city today. They had made the crossing, and the first thing a surviving community builds is a thank-you. That history is why the temple sits at the centre of the district rather than at its edge.

What should you look at?

The roof, before anything inside. The ridges carry rows of ceramic figures: opera scenes, court processions, dragons and fish. The Foshan kilns near Guangzhou made them and shipped them over in pieces.

Inside, the courtyard is where the incense coils hang, spiralling down from the beams with paper prayers on them, burning for days. Behind them is the altar to Thien Hau, flanked by two guardians, and the side halls carry other deities the congregation brought with it.

Is it Buddhist?

Not really, and the English word pagoda is the confusion. Thien Hau is a folk temple of the Chinese maritime tradition, dedicated to a deified woman rather than to the Buddha. Taoist and Buddhist figures stand in the side halls, because a congregation of this kind does not sort its gods.

The mixing is normal in Vietnam rather than unusual. The religions guide covers how the traditions overlap. The pagodas guide explains how to read a Vietnamese Buddhist layout, which this is not.

Why is Cho Lon Cantonese?

Because the migration came in waves and each one kept to itself. Chinese communities settled the Mekong region from the seventeenth century, and by the time Cho Lon was a city in its own right the congregations were organised by home province: Cantonese, Teochew, Fujianese, Hakka and Hainanese, each with its own temple, school and burial society.

Thien Hau belongs to the Cantonese. Walk ten minutes and the Teochew and Fujianese temples are as old and as decorated, and almost empty by comparison. That division is why a district of this size has half a dozen major temples rather than one.

What does the temple ask of a visitor?

Covered shoulders and knees, shoes on except where a mat says otherwise, and no flash at the altars. Photographs of the building are fine and photographs of people praying are not. That rule holds everywhere and gets broken here more than anywhere in Saigon.

Buying incense is optional and costs 10,000 to 20,000 dong. If you light some, three sticks is the convention, and they go in the large urn in the courtyard rather than in a side one. The etiquette guide sets out the rest.

Where does it fit in a Cho Lon morning?

Cho Lon in the morning, this temple first. The temple is in District 5, about 5 km from the centre and twenty minutes by Grab. It pairs with the wholesale market and the herb streets around it, and the Ho Chi Minh City hub covers what Cho Lon is as a district.

Allow forty minutes at the temple itself. Going on to Ben Thanh market afterwards is the standard route back towards District 1, and the three-day Saigon itinerary puts the morning in order.

When is it at its best?

Late morning, when the light comes through the open courtyard roof and the smoke is thickest. Mid-afternoon is flat and the building loses most of what makes it photogenic.

The twenty-third day of the third lunar month, usually in April, is the festival, and the goddess is carried through Cho Lon in procession. That day the district is genuinely busy and the temple is impossible to move in, which some visitors will want and others should avoid.