Cao Dai Temple

Da Nang’s Cao Dai Temple, at 63 Hai Phong opposite the hospital, was built in 1956 and is Vietnam’s second most important after Tay Ninh.

An elderly archbishop, assisted by fifteen priests, ministers to a congregation said to number 50,000 here. The temple, which sees few tourists, is a smaller, simpler version of Tay Ninh, dominated inside by the all-seeing eye of the Supreme Being and paintings of Cao Dai’s principal saints, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Jesus Christ and Buddha for more on these tenets).

Services were banned between 1975 and 1986 and the building locked up, but now adherents gather to worship four times a day (6am, noon, 6pm & midnight). The occasional tourists who do turn up find it has more erratic opening times than its larger sister temple outside Ho Chi Minh City; you may find the gate locked when there is no service on.