Vinh Nghiem Buddhist Temple

This guide to Vinh Nghiem Temple in Ho Chi Minh City opens with two monks, Thich Tam Giac and Thich Thanh Kiem, arriving in Saigon after the 1954 partition of Vietnam with no temple, no money, and only the memory of one wooden pagoda back in Bac Giang province. Ordinary worshippers funded the trucking of soil into a canal-side swamp just to make the ground solid enough to build on, before construction began in 1964.