One weekend, we headed out into Hanoi to explore, and came across Ham Long Church. There are several Catholic churches in Hanoi, including the big cathedral. Ham Long is a small one, but it's really beautiful. From the churches flagpole fly two flags: the flag of the Vatican, and a Vietnamese prayer flag that always flies above Taoist temples, emblazoned with a cross instead of the usual Chinese character.
All of the churches that we have seen in Hanoi tend to have nice gardens with statues and lots of places to sit and rest. Nearly every single one has a prayer grotto - a man-made cave with a small altar and maybe a statue of Jesus or Mary inside. I know that it's not a distinctly Vietnamese thing, but these prayer grottoes seem to be very, very popular here.
St. Francis Xavier also seems very popular here. After all, he was one of the main dudes responsible for bringing Christianity to Asia way back in the 1500s.
Besides St. Francis, the "Apostle of the East", there are a number of other Vietnamese saints and missionaries who are popular at Vietnamese Catholic churches.
Vietnam has a large Catholic population, which I believe will only grow larger the further south we get. South Vietnamese leadership was heavily Catholic, and Communism would never have worked well in Vietnam if the government had tried to outlaw religion as they did in many other Communist countries. Even besides the Christian population, Vietnam tends to be a very spiritual and religious country (Taoist, Buddhist, Confucian, Catholic, etc), and I doubt the people would have gone along with an anti-religious Communist takeover.
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