What About Vietnam – S5-E27 – Discovering Catholic Treasures of Vietnam: Church Hunting in Ninh Binh and Nam Dinh
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A podcast with Carrie Newsome. The series where Carrie talks with travellers about their experiences and adventures. Find out more about Vietnam from the people who have actually been there. What about Vietnam? Whether it's adventure, exploring the culture and cuisine, shopping or just soaking up the sun. Let Carrie and her travellers pave the way for a magical holiday in Vietnam. What about Vietnam? MUSIC

Xin chào and welcome to the What About Vietnam podcast. I'm your host, Kerry Newsome, and today we're stepping into the world you may not expect to find in Vietnam, the world of Catholic churches. I know, it took me by surprise as well. On a recent journey through the North, I found myself genuinely surprised and deeply moved by the stunning architecture of

peaceful presence and rich history of these churches, some tucked away in the most unlikely places. You might be wondering, how did Catholicism end up in Vietnam? Well, it dates back to the 16th century with Portuguese missionaries, but it was during the French colonial era, particularly the 19th and the 20th centuries, that Catholicism really took root.

The French left more than just baguettes and grand boulevards. They left cathedrals, monasteries, convents, and a strong Christian presence that still lives on today. And you'll hear that in the stories that we tell.

Today, about 7% of Vietnam's population identifies as Catholic, one of the largest Catholic communities in Southeast Asia. And while many associate Catholicism with the South,

The north is full of hidden gems, quiet villages with beautiful stone churches. As we were driving along the road, we could see the steeples, some over 100 years old, where the faith and local culture intertwine in the most unique ways. I hope you'll join me and my guests as we go in search of churches, exploring their stories, their architecture, and the peaceful energy they bring to the vibrant and

and spiritual land of Vietnam. This show and my lovely guest have had this in the works for a very long time. We've talked about exploring northern Vietnam and certainly in the region of Ninh Binh and Nam Dinh. In our search, would you believe for churches?

So you may have heard a previous episode that I did with her. And

And we did mention it briefly and we did say, look, next trip we will definitely go in search for churches. So today I hope you'll welcome heart to the program and we are going to tell you about our little journey over the last 24, 48 hours of exploring this area for churches. And I think you're going to really, really be surprised to

because I know, I hope I've captured my amazing face and expressions when I have seen these magnificent churches. So, Ha, please say hello. Hello, Carrie. Hello, everybody. Welcome, and I'm so happy to indeed have this opportunity to go church hunting with Carrie Newsome. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So a little bit of background to the trip and the beginning. So we, of course, started in Hanoi.

From Hanoi, we have engaged with a personal driver. From my perspective as an international traveler, obviously as a foreigner, I think this was the best way to do it. Now, I have the advantage of her.

and I have her for two reasons of enjoyment. One, she is extremely knowledgeable about these churches as she is a frequent visitor. And secondly, she has...

put some research into the churches that we are going to talk about. So she was able to speak to them with great fluency, and you're going to hear that as we go through the show. Plus, she can even use her Vietnamese tongue to be able to say the names and the districts and things like that. And of course, you know much better than me.

And then her great company as I got to know her a little bit more and in our exploration with visiting the churches, just how lovely it was to find this part of Vietnam that

I don't know. I'm not sure that many of you would think of Vietnam in this vein and think of a Catholic population of, I think Har mentioned to me during the day, that it's around about 8% of the population of Vietnamese that are actually Catholic and follow the Catholic Church. But I'm not even a Catholic person.

But me being brought up in Hanoi and have been to the Hanoi church, the Hanoi cathedral, and seeing the splendor, the beauty of it, I eventually got interested to know more about the church.

And I have to admit that I didn't really understand the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism until I was quite a young adult. So Northern Vietnam, where I come from, is about Catholicism.

Catholicism. And the provinces that we visited this time with Carrie, Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh are the cradle of Christianity, specifically Catholicism in Vietnam. And the first church that we visited is the Bùi Chú Cathedral. And Bùi Chú Cathedral

Diocese is the longest serving and one can say it is like truly the cradle of Portuguese missionaries who came to Vietnam and started the dioceses there.

Bui Chu Cathedral used to be, it had a 150 years history. It used to be quite run down. And the fathers at Bui Chu were worried before COVID about it being, the risking to collapse anytime. So despite all the old history and the splendor of it and all the nonstop discussion with architects,

they actually had to make the painful decision to take down and build a new one. So when Carrie and I visited this time, we actually see the mostly completed new building

cathedral built I think mostly to the same exact design and decoration as the old one it's beautiful and it is it sits in a majestic area and the people the workers the contractors who are working there

were beaming with pride about what they are doing and they are completing. And they told us that the grand opening of the new cathedral, Bui Chu Cathedral, is going to be sometime next year, 2026. But as soon as August this year, masses and services would be started to be conducted inside the church again. And for visitors who come to

Nam Dinh to see the beauties of the cathedrals and churches there. I think if you had to, if you can plan to be on a weekend, it would be wonderful because you will see the masses, you will see the churches as a community center with activities, with all the living actions in there and it is actually wonderful

Seeing it is, in a way, is also as interesting as seeing those churches and cathedrals just as like old relics or old building architectures.

So that is something that both Carrie and I were very happy to see, including we were able to speak to the people around and hear them expressing their joy and pride of the catechism that they are contributing to. In their community. Yeah.

You may see at the beginning of the show notes in the podcast channel that you're listening from some words that say text me a message. It's a great idea. Don't get me wrong. I love hearing from you and, you know, whether that's your thoughts on the episodes, some questions, messages of appreciation, you know, I just love the feedback. It's really great. However, I feel it remiss of me not

to A, not thank you for them, but to B, not be able to respond directly to you. So if you have sent me a question and I've got lots and you haven't heard from me, there's a really good reason why I actually don't have the ability in the technology to respond to you. They kind of expect...

that you would or I would answer the questions in the form of a show. And there's just kind of too many and I just think it's just too personal not to do it that way. So I wanted to alert you to the fact that if you do send me a message through that connection option, I'm not going to be able to respond to you directly.

So if you do have a question and it is time sensitive or you want to send me any kind of message, can I suggest the following two ways? One, send me an email to whataboutvietnamatgmail.com. That is the email address that I have the most constant access to and I will aim to get back to you ASAP.

Secondly, if you go to the website for the podcast, which is whataboutvietnam.com, if you scroll right to the bottom, there is a chance for you to leave a voice message. Now, in that voice message, I can respond to you directly.

equally with a response in voice. So if you want a quick response, that's your next best way. But I just wanted to get this into the show, make you aware of this as it really is becoming problematic and I've just got too many and I can't kind of go naming people and answering each question at

That's just a little bit silly. So if you have sent me a text message before and you're waiting on a message back as a response, I'm so sorry. I cannot do that. But if you want to send the question again, I'd be more than happy to answer. And it was intriguing for me to learn during the journey that Hart was saying that

You know, we were spotting churches on the road, like we were driving along and we would see the churches and the steeples. The spikes. Yeah, the spikes. And it was like every couple of –

miles in some places. And I think, what did you say? You said there's about two churches. Yes. So the density and the frequency of you spotting churches in Nam Dinh, especially, is so much that, um, uh,

It's almost like two churches per village. To be admittedly, not all villages in Nam Dinh are Christian and Catholic churches, villages, but they have very dense areas, almost like whole districts, where the Catholic population is so dense and so...

serving that you do have two churches per village and it's such a big fun because it is literally church hunting because we won't see two churches to the left and three churches to our right and it is like oh

trying to see which one is bigger, which one is more beautiful, which one has a more interesting bell tower. And as we're going along, half saying, oh, look, there's another one. And Carrie, you missed this one. And I was like, you know, my head was on a swivel. Spinning. To just, I was, because I think...

Once again, going into this trip, obviously I had the headset to look for churches, but they would be easy to dismiss if you were just taking the journey to get from Hanoi to Nam Din or to Din Bin or Tam Coc, because this is the area that we are in, to not keep your eyes open to this.

And what was lovely about this cathedral in particular, we happened to have a short conversation with the father that was there. Unfortunately, my French is very poor, as poor as my Vietnamese. So Hart did a great job to sort of say hello and tell the father about what we were doing.

But we made the comment about the construction and some of the decisions to make it all look perfectly new and all the rest of it next to the older, collapsed building.

part of the building. And obviously with that age and sure it is destruction and it can't be sustainable, but it shows the history. You can see the history in the brickwork and

what is left. So we were able to wander around the grounds. We weren't able to actually go inside because of the construction, but it began our journey and we went on a little bit further and we went on to explore the Basilica. As you would know with a Basilica, it is recognized by the church as an official part of their church.

of the religion and recognized by the Pope and all the rest of it. So over to you, Ha, about let's talk about that beautiful basilica. Yes. So we have four basilicas in Vietnam, two in the north, one in central Vietnam, and one is right there in the center of Saigon.

So it is actually for you to find out more about the four basilicas. But this time, Carrie and I, we were able to visit Phú Nhai Basilica. And it is, I think, number two or number three largest basilica

Catholic churches in Vietnam and Phu Nhai Basilica is also famous because it appeared in many films and documentaries in Vietnam. And when you are either in Buu Chu Cathedral or Phu Nhai Basilica,

you would be easily thinking that you are not in Vietnam. The Gothic architecture, all the details, all the design and decoration, all the bas-relief on the walls surrounding the basilica are beautiful.

as though like even like Greek in some ways. So it is kind of intriguing to look further and see rice fields and some very non-Vietnamese edifice being there. And the basilica is wonderful in the sense that it is interesting

the center of that community. And we were able to walk around and children running around and families next door to the basilica creating beautiful bonsais and, you know, leaving cross using like ornament,

trees and plants. So all those smaller details add to the

to the living beauty of a basilica in a thriving community. And I'm sure that many visitors could also, we would recommend you also to walk around and many of the houses actually open and people are very welcoming people to come in. And whether you are a Catholic like them or you are not, like in my case, they would be like very, very willing to tell you about

the basilicas, the importance of it in the community. Was that the one where we went to the very elaborate houses very close by? We did. It's actually next door. Yes, next door. Because the grounds were immaculate. They were well-maintained. The bonsais were beautifully crafted. Hannah tells me that...

The area is well known to have bonsai masters who do take great care in looking after the bonsais because they are everywhere. And what was crazy and kind of doing my head in a little bit is that you can be forgiven for thinking, am I still in Vietnam? This looks...

and feels like it could be somewhere in Italy because the craftsmanship is Gothic, is Roman, is Catholic in every sense of the word. So what you are seeing in some of the statues and some of the engravings and some of the

There's nothing that they have adapted to make it look Vietnamese. It's the other way. It's made to look very, very, very Catholic and obviously religious. I really hope that since we asked Vietnam stats to have the

representative of the Pope in residing in Hanoi since 2022. One day, the representative of the Pope would be able to come and visit these magnificent basilicas around the country. We moved on from the basilica and we went to another church and I got to

Have a really good walk around this one, and I'll leave it to you, Ha, to give a little bit of context to, is that Kian? Kian Lau. Kian Lau Church. Actually, we stayed there a little bit too short time. You flew the… The fly cam, yeah. Yeah. But I think we, since we…

Are you going to do that part, you know, with the flight cam? Is it good enough to? So Hart is asking just how much imagery and photography and that I will share with the show. So when I get a chance to stop and have a look at some of the imagery I was able to capture using a small drone, I'll be able to show you just how much

magnificent it is but we were kind of we kind of got chewed up with time with a little bit of technology issues but yes I will do as much as I can with the show on the website whataboutvietnam.com

So we went to Kien Lao Church, which is beautiful and special in the sense that we were able to go inside. And the acoustics as well as the lighting inside the church is just mesmerizing. It's just so captivating.

And we are not in a very sunny day, but the light outside, inside the church, makes me feel very special. And that is one thing that makes me want to go back to the Catholic churches all the time, because I can see the harmony of the light and the beauty of the

Thank you.

makes the light and the acoustics work so wonderfully, almost like in any other Catholic churches elsewhere in Europe. Exactly. Was this the one where we...

The children were singing and we caught the children. Yes, it was. Oh, that was such a lucky chance. That was so beautiful. They were so enthusiastic and maybe I made sure that they kind of knew that I was filming them because I thought they would sing to that knowing that I was doing some filming. But it was just lovely. And then we walked around and there was the pulpit stair. That was the one with the staircase up? Yes. Yes, that was just amazing.

Stunning, isn't it? Stunning. Yeah, absolutely. For visitors, I think if you can time your time to Kien Lau Church or like some of those bigger churches, after 11 in the morning at around 11,

Before lunchtime, I think you have a very good probability catching those children learning, children's choir, practicing singing, chanting in the church. Because that is when they came back from their morning school and they would have church class hours quickly. So we were very lucky that in the morning we hear the children singing and the afternoon singing.

We hear another wonderful chanting. Yeah, wait for that. Yes. The next church, and this one was very, very different. In fact, Halloween has been referred to this church, and she'll explain a little bit about why. We went to Hung Nghia Church, which is not too far away from Kien Lau Church. And in the past, it was like...

dark and reddish color, which is very striking among the Vietnamese lush green rice field and everything. But this time when we visited it, it's

Painted. Black. Yes, dark black. And in another striking way because some of the decoration details are intentionally, I think, painted red and white. So the contrast is quite striking. And the contrast is striking. And it is a super big complex of a church.

So I thought they are going to use it for filming of some Halloween story. But I asked the people around, the locals, and they said no, no, they are serious about keeping it officially in this appearance. So it is like painting dark black with red windows and decoration details in black.

So it's kind of really out of this world. And the photo, you'll see in the photo, you'll see what we're talking about with colours because I don't think I've ever seen a black cathedral before.

But this one, it's not quite finished. I think they expect to have it finished in a few months' time. Few months? Yeah. In a few months' time, yes. Okay. Kind of stood there just in awe of the striking colors. And it doesn't have...

too much of a surrounding area that you would want to spend time with. You just need to add it into the trip to just see the striking difference against the setting of Vietnam, rice fields and all of that area. But I do want Hart to talk a lot about the next stop

because for me that was probably the one that really struck my soul and we did manage to have an experience there that we didn't expect. It was at dusk. So we did this on a Friday afternoon.

which is probably is going to say probably the weekend is probably better, but it will be busier. So we got to experience a lot of these without any big crowds. There was no like buses pulled up and you won't see that kind of experience in these places.

So, you know, it is a journey, very personal. And I think for those of you who do follow the faith, you know, you would go with that mindset. It's not a touristy kind of experience and I don't actually want it to be. We talked about this in the car and I said, you know, I do not want big buses rolling up at these places because

But I do want you to know about them so that if you do want to take this personal journey like I did and partly fed out of curiosity that in a country where, you know, over 90% of the population is Buddhist and

to find thriving Catholic communities that exist and are there with these magnificent churches. You kind of have to see it to believe it. But this particular cathedral is the setting. Just let me try and paint this picture before I lead in.

It was like about 5 p.m. and it was just coming into dusk. So you can imagine the skyline with the sun about to set in the background. Over to you, Ha, so you can talk through our total experience, including some of the acoustic experience. So Kerry and I saved time.

The best for last, because in the afternoon we crossed the borders from Nam Dinh province to Ninh Binh province, and we visited a hidden treasure, the Chau Son Monastery. It is a functioning monastery. It's a little bit far away. It is actually next to our monastery.

mountain and the driver was also a little bit unsure of how to find that place and certainly there are no busloads of tourists it is a quiet, tranquil place. It is a gothic monastery just like you are stepping in a Harry Potter world. It is

It's so beautiful and well-kept with minimal restoration, I would say. So you really have to see it in order to be stunned by the Gothic architecture against the beauty of Ningbing Mountains with a magnificent garden, with the underground caves and all the immaculately

Manicured lawns and bonsais. And we were so lucky that the chapel was opened. And the monks who lived there, trained there, studied there, came in and did a wonderful afternoon chanting. Again, as you might know, I come to those places because I admire the acoustics.

And this time, of course, it didn't disappoint me. The acoustic in this beautiful location and looking a little bit out to see the sunset, the dusk, it's like unbelievable, unbelievably surreal.

Choson Monastery, as I mentioned, it's going to be 90 years old next year. And they have been a functioning monastery with practicing monks all the time. And they are very thoughtful to make it available and accessible to the public gradually. Because I have visited that place maybe 15 times. So

So the first few times when I came there, I actually had to call in advance, ask for permission from the father to come in. And then eventually they open it like one, two days per week. And now it looks to me that they are not like open for massive tourism, but they do open and they do welcome the guests. And it is pretty far away. It is far.

pretty unwell known yet, but it is truly somewhere you really will feel that you are, you touch the beauty of your spiritual soul and the setting is there for you to really to, um, to see the grandiose, like, um,

of nature, with thoughtfulness of people. And we caught some rabbits in the gardens. And the roosters fighting nicely. Yeah. I mean, the gardens are just something else, you know, in addition to the actual church itself. So it's a place where you could spend and you should allow a little bit more time, I think,

Now, Hart was surprised that we were able to be there at about five o'clock and experience the chanting of the monks. And we don't know yet. We're going to do a bit more research around whether that is actually typical because she was kind of told it's normally at two o'clock, not at five o'clock. And, you know, I had...

I kind of put my two bobs in the sense that I was trying to go at dusk because I wanted the colors of dusk in the sky to surround this area. And I was right when we were there and I was taking photos and doing a little bit of video. It was just...

mesmerizing the color mixtures and the feeling. I could have spent more time there and I wish we did have more time. And that's going to lead into the next thing I want to talk about is timing. Because we were able to fit

those five in that we've just talked about in the day. Now, if you pushed yourself, you know, but still add in time for lunch and to come back to wherever you're staying. Now, we're staying at the Emeralda in Tamcock.

And I have to say, we were really impressed. It's really only been open here for a couple of years, but the setting of it and where it is...

Once again, I'm going to try and put as much imagery and photos because I did go a bit nuts with the photos and the video. So please watch the social pages and, you know, you can talk to me anytime. Reach out and I can give you some more information about these places.

But specifically, I do want to talk about the timing and the time allowance that you should consider when you're putting your trip together from Hanoi to visit this area. So today we have an experience where we're going to see one more, and I'm going to ask Hanoi.

to talk about this one because we won't get to come back on the microphones again in today to actually talk about the experience. I will add in a little bit more later when I get back home to add to the actual full show to tell you how I experienced it. But because she's been before, she's going to be able to tell you about it from her experience.

So today we have one more. That means that in two days, one night, we will have seen six. And that is allowing me time to get back to Hanoi and Hanoi airport. Now,

Personally, now that I've done this, I probably would be recommending you to do two nights and take your time and with your driver and with your guide, allow yourself a little bit more time at these places, build in a nice place we would look at for you to spend for lunch and then come back to enjoy the resort.

And, you know, Harp and I wanted to come back later. We'd had a great day. We had a chance to have a nice swim, sit by the water side and just take in the ambience of the actual resort. So I still think, you know, one night is rushing it a little bit.

two nights is definitely allowing you to luxuriate and really feel the area. And you could still fill it with more churches because, you know, there's plenty of them to see. So, Harkin, I ask you to just speak to a little bit about the one we're going to see now. So, Kerry, yesterday we have seen...

very, very European-style church, cathedrals, and basilicas. Today we are going to see a church, which I would jokingly call a fusion church. It is going to be the Phat Diop Stone Cathedral. It is the other crowd of Catholic system in the Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh area, together with Bui Chu Cathedral.

Phazip Cateron is enormous. It is a stone complex of caterons and charpons and praying areas.

And it is built with the Ninh Binh limestone, which is famous in this area, on what used to be a swamp. So the engineering work that goes into it is enormous. And it is a combination of Catholic church architecture and Vietnamese traditional communal houses. So it's going to look kind of

funky in a way very traditional but also very unexpected and like very intriguing in many ways modernistic modernistic as well and like it's

The nuns there would explain to us why certain things are designed or made a certain way. And the story behind all those smaller details are also exciting. So I look forward to go with you in a few minutes to that place. And for sure, please do add more of your own feeling and impression of Phat Diep Stone Cathedral to our podcast, Carrie, for sure.

So the other aspect of the trip that it has –

to me is that you definitely could add more churches into your experience. Like we have done only a small snapshot. We have not even done 1% of the over 600 churches in Nam Dinh province alone, right? Okay. We have 99% more churches to see. So you're now getting the gist that this is, yeah, a snapshot of...

what is open to you to explore and we could build that in. For the purpose of your planning, I would, as I said, have a look at just how much time you have on your hands to explore this region. The lovely thing about this region from Hanoi is that it is still only in the vicinity of two, three hours.

uh, in time. So it's not like having to go, uh, on those bigger trips where you're going into Yen Bai or you're going to Mu Kang Chai or where it's, you know, five, six, seven hours each way, which chew up a lot of time. So this is like some magic, very close to Hanoi. I will put in the

and the basilicas and the churches that we did see. You, as I said, can reach out to me any time and I can access the right information to build in more if you wanted to do a specific church tour because there is no church tour that you can kind of just follow

buy off the shelf. And I think that's good. I think it should be something that we craft for you as a person, as an individual, as a person who follows the faith maybe, or like her, who doesn't follow the faith. However, her curiosity in the churches and Catholicism, Vietnam,

kind of gave her the insights to want to know more and explore more. And I mean, you know, the one we went to yesterday, 15 times she's been there. So yeah,

She still looked in awe of the experience as I did for the first time. So I think there's a lot to be had, and I hope you've enjoyed the show, and thank you, Huff, for spending the time with me. I so enjoyed it. I knew it would be good, and it's lived up to my expectations for sure. Wonderful. So happy to hear that you are enjoying it as much as I did, Carrie.

Okay, I will let you go and we will get on to the next church, the Modernistic Fusion Church. Let's go.

Just wanted to finish off everyone referring to the Vatsyam Cathedral that Hannah refers to just as we were closing off there. We did get to cover it off. It was really hot about kind of 10 o'clock in the morning. So, you know, would recommend you going earlier in the day or in the cooler of the afternoon. A massive area. Look, it's...

It is modernistic, very futuristic in the way it's trying to combine the two religions. It

It didn't kind of capture my soul, I have to admit. However, you know, to see just the expansiveness, the devil of detail that obviously the architects have gone to to try and combine them as best they can is really quite amazing. It is a big area, so you really need to allow

plenty of time to walk around it, to get the gardens and just the full area. They do run masses and you can look up their times to attend those masses. It was truly impressive. But as I said, would it, would it, did it,

kind of do it for me, probably not as much as the others did that we covered off yesterday. And because there's so many more to cover, I probably wouldn't include this one. I'd probably go seeking some others that we didn't get to do on this trip. That's not to say we won't do it in the future. However, I just wanted to cover this off as Hannah said, we were going and she was very excited to see this one again.

I hope you've enjoyed the show. We have covered off quite a lot and please reach out if you need any further information. I look forward to bringing you future shows of the What About Vietnam podcast and just want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. Check out the episode notes for more information. What about Vietnam? Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and stay tuned for more fun adventures in Vietnam.

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