Boh Heng Journey

2 Jul 2026

Day 15

Cholon, Chinatown Saigon

Ho Chi Minh city should be the motorcycles capital of the world. The noise and air pollution is really bad.

This overpopulated city, the roads are bursting with motorcycles, people and street vendors.

Strangely it's hard to see any accidents and people dont get angry and quarrel over "right of way" like in other countries. The roads really look chaotic and messy, but the traffic flows seamlessly.

Chinatown in Saigon is like our Chinatown streets in the 60's. The streets are cramped and dirty, hawkers plying their wares on sidewalks and every street corners.

The chinese here are immigrants from southern China. You can hear some cantonese and hokkien spoken here. Shops here still retain Chinese names on signboards.

Notably there are a numbers of temples along most streets with distinctive Chinese characters. They were built by Chinese immigrants of different dialects

Most iconic temple is Thien Hau Pagoda. This temple honour the sea goddess (Mazu in other part of Asia) featuring colourful ornate Chinese architecture. It was first built more than 200 years ago. Thus a lot of immigrants history can be drawn from this temple.

This is the Hainanese clan temple in Saigon Chinatown. I spoke to the temple keeper in Hainanese and he said many Hainanese immigrants came here were engaged in trade or food businesses.

Because of economic hardship, immigrants risked their life sailing on rickety junks sailing through stormy seas to another country (mostly to Nanyang) in search of better life. They prayed to sea goddess (Mazu) for divine protection and safely.

This temple, On Lang Pagoda has hokkien roots.

One temple I heard hokkien dialect spoken. Ha Chuong Pagoda.

There is even a large Catholic church with chinese writing and murals. The church was built by the French.

In Saigon, there are many specialty streets doing specific trade. There are also many Chinese restaurants and there is a Hainanese Chicken rice restaurantwhere I ate my dinner.