Place of worship
Giac Vien Buddhist Temple
161/35/20 Lạc Long Quân, Bình Thới, Hồ Chí Minh
Nineteenth-century wooden temple of one hundred fifty three jackfruit-wood statues and rare carved panels, now beside a theme park.
This guide to Giac Vien Buddhist Temple in Ho Chi Minh City traces it back to 1798, when a caretaker named Huong Dang was hired to guard timber floating in for a rebuild at nearby Giac Lam pagoda and built himself a guardhouse to sleep in. You'll hear how a small statue he placed inside that hut grew into a recognized shrine by 1805, then into a temple renamed by the monk Hai Tinh in 1850, one that became a center of Buddhism for the southern provinces. Listen for how the carved jackfruit-wood statues filling the main hall connect back to that original woodpile.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.