Like a prayer

Somewhere in the remote part of Central Vietnam is Lavang. Since my family is all hardcore Catholic, they wanted to make the pilgrimage here to check it out.

Apparently the Virgin Mary appeared here in the forest in 1798 when the Catholics were being persecuted by the ruler at the time. Since then, they've erected a ginormous statue of her and some really cool looking smurf-like trees around her and have all these religious ceremonies year round. Pope John Paul II used to be a regular visitor.



I said a prayer at the foot of the statue.



A twist of a knob on any of these stone angels will spout out blessed/holy water. All the little old ladies on our tour bus asked me to fill up their lil jugs so they could try to smuggle them back to the US in their luggage. Good luck with that ladies!