Thursday, 09 March 2023. Written by Morgan Ommer. Photos by Morgan Ommer..
Darkroom is a Saigoneer photography series that documents the beauty and stories of Vietnam and beyond. The compelling images encourage one to reflect upon the complexity of the human condition and the world.The Mekong Delta is called Đồng bằng Sông Cửu Long in Vietnamese — the Nine Dragons River, for the way the mighty Mekong splits into multiple strands as it nears its final destination, the East Sea.
To the estimated 18 million inhabitants of the Mekong Delta, the river is more than just a geographical feature; it defines their whole lives. Annual floods make many roads impossible to use. Meanwhile, the fact that the region boasts around 15,000 miles of navigable waterways to only 1,500 miles of compacted road offers another hint as to how most people travel.
Market ladies on a motorized boat.
The Mekong Delta is a beautiful part of Vietnam and one I was immediately impressed with on my first visit, an exploratory boat trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Rạch Giá in August 2010.
I was fascinated by how the area’s inhabitants lived and their daily interactions with the Mekong River. I was so impressed with how the people of the region traveled that I went back several times and focused on how they crossed the water. The ferries are a microcosm of life along the river. The crossings are generally short and you get to meet all kinds of people on the boat. It’s a pause in your journey, filled with snacks, bargaining sessions and sometimes entertainment.
School day.
People they rush everywhere Each with their own secret care
This series is the result of these journeys, traveling mostly in the dry season. I crossed with school children, interviewed ferry captains and their crew, attempted to speak Vietnamese with delivery men on massively overloaded bikes and haggled with vendors carting everything from vividly colored fruit and vegetables to toilet paper and cigarettes. I also bought a lot of lottery tickets.
Bringing the goods.
People around every corner They seem to smile and say
I boarded ferries built for mass transit with trucks and buses, as well as humble vessels fit only for a couple of passengers and a bike. All the journeys were different, all were memorable.
With Vietnam developing so rapidly, it is hard to predict the future of this region. The construction of new roads and bridges has made the Mekong Delta a lot more accessible, thus putting many boats out of business.
However, while the ferries still run I highly recommend you travel there yourself. Crossing is inexpensive and there is so much to discover.
50 Shades of blue.
We don’t care what your name is boy
A pilot’s life.
Boat lady.
We’ll never turn you away
Embarkation.
So I’ll continue to say
A quick review of school materials before class.
Ready to rumble.
Stormy weather.
Here I always will stay
Portrait of a captain.
Rush hour.
Sunset on deck.
So ferry, cross the Mersey/Mekong ‘Cause this land’s the place I love And here I’ll stay And here I’ll stay Here I’ll stay
Wednesday, 01 March 2023. Written by Tim Doling. Top photo by Alberto Prieto.
AAAYou just have to mention the “pink church” and everyone knows which one you mean. But few are aware that the building in question — Tân Định Church — is one of Saigon’s oldest and most important Roman Catholic institutions.
The history of Tân Định Church may be traced back to 1874, when a Catholic mission was set up here under Father Donatien Éveillard (1835–1883). It was Éveillard who supervised the construction of the first church, which cost 15,000 piastres (38,000 Francs) and was inaugurated in December 1876.
While no image of the original church survives, this drawing shows the rebuilt church of 1896–1898, before the front tower was added.
Éveillard also invited the Sisters of Saint-Paul de Chartres to set up an orphanage and boarding school next to the church. This Sainte Enfance de Tan-Dinh, or École de Tan-Dinh, opened in 1877 and by the early 1880s it had around 300 children.
Perhaps Éveillard’s greatest achievement was the establishment at Tân Định of a religious publishing house known as the Imprimerie de la Mission, where he trained disadvantaged children from the Sainte Enfance de Tan-Dinh for the publishing trade.
The interior of Tân Định Church after the reconstruction of 1928–1929.
A much-loved figure in the local community, Éveillard died in 1883 and was buried beneath the nave of the church, where his tombstone may still be seen today.
By the early 1890s, the original church and school buildings were no longer fit for purpose, so Éveillard’s successor, Father Louis-Eugène Louvet (1838–1900), organised a lottery to raise funds to rebuild them. Much of the present Tân Định Church dates from 1896–1898, when this reconstruction was carried out at a cost of 8,600 piastres (22,000 Francs).
In 2023 Saigon, the Tân Định Church is a well-known tourist destination thanks to its iconic coat of paint. Photo by Nguyễn Lương Cao Nhân.
The adjacent school buildings were also rebuilt during this period and a new École des Sourds-Muets de Tan-Dinh (school for deaf and mute children) was opened within the Sainte Enfance de Tan-Dinh. By 1908, the Sainte Enfance had a staffing complement of four French and 10 Vietnamese nuns.
Designed in Romanesque style with Gothic and Renaissance elements, Tân Định Church comprises a nave with a tall barrel-vaulted roof (today hidden by a false ceiling), separated by arcades from side aisles and outer corridors. The design also incorporates a triforium or shallow-arched upper gallery and features two apsidal chapels which extrude from either side of the nave, close to the entrance. The one to your right as you enter the church is dedicated to Mary and Joseph, while the one to your left is dedicated to St. Theresa. The Saint statues and the 14 Stations of the Cross which currently adorn the outer side aisle pillars date from the 1890s.
It was Louvet who appointed a missionary named Jean-François-Marie Génibrel (1851–1914) to run the Imprimerie de la Mission. In subsequent years, alongside religious works, Génibrel published a remarkable series of scholarly publications, including the Manuel de conversation Annamite-Français (1893), the Vocabulaire Français-Annamite (1898), the Vocabulaire Annamite-Français (1906) and the ground-breaking Dictionnaire Annamite-Français (1898), which took Génibrel 14 years of painstaking research. Génibrel also started working on a Dictionnaire Français-Annamite but never completed it.
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The church is closed to visitors on Sundays. Photo by Nguyễn Lương Cao Nhân.
The publishing house at Tân Định Church continued in operation until 1951. By special request, several published works and some old printing tools from the Imprimerie de la Mission may still be viewed today in the St. Joseph’s Seminary museum at 6 Tôn Đức Thắng.
Tân Định Church underwent further reconstruction in 1928–1929, commissioned by Father Jean-Baptiste Nguyễn Bá Tòng (1868–1949), who later famously became Indochina’s first Vietnamese bishop, responsible for the diocese of Phát Diệm.
A rear view of Tân Định Church after the reconstruction of 1928–1929.
During this period, the 52.62-meter, six-bell octagonal tower and entrance vestibule was added to the front of the building and a false ceiling was created above the nave. A single-storey U-shaped rear extension was also installed at the rear of the nave, in order to provide new vestry space and to create large open seating wings on either side of the altar platform.
While the 1928–1929 reconstruction was under way, wealthy French parishioner François Haasz and his Vietnamese wife Anne Tống Thị Mực paid for the installation of the church’s richly decorated Italian marble high altar and side altars, which today rank among the most outstanding decorative features of any church in Saigon.
More detail from the church’s richly-decorated Italian marble high altar, paid for by wealthy French parishioner François Haasz and his Vietnamese wife Anne Tống Thị Mực.
In 1949, the structural pillars in the nave were strengthened and, in 1957, the church was refurbished and repainted in the memorable pink colour (salmon pink on the outside, strawberries and cream on the inside!) which it has sported ever since. Since that time the church has undergone major refurbishment on several occasions.
The sanctuary of Tân Định Church features an elaborately decorated Italian high altar of 1929. The pink color of the interior was subsequently painted over in recent years.
The former Sainte Enfance de Tan-Dinh, next to the church, is still partially used by the Sisters of Saint-Paul de Chartres, but most of the complex now houses the Hai Bà Trưng High School at 295 Hai Bà Trưng street.
I know where you go to, my lovely When you’re alone in your bed I know the thoughts that surround you ‘Cause I can look inside your head.
And Finally!
If you go away as I know you must There’ll be nothin’ left in the world to trust.
If you go away on this summer day Then you might as well take the sun away.
If you go away as I know you must
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