If you are planning a holiday to Vietnam then you should definitely put aside a morning or afternoon while you are in
Ho Chi Minh City in order to visit
Thu Duc.
Thu Duc is a fascinating place.
It is a vast geographic area, almost a city in itself, though it is classified as one of the districts of
Ho Chi Minh City.
It has always been something of a poor cousin, home to slums and
sub-standard housing, though in recent years this seems to be changing,
and
Thu Duc's proximity to
central Saigon (it's just across the river) is seeing it become increasingly prosperous.
One of the places I use as a gauge of that prosperity is Van Duc Temple.
I
first visited the temple in the late 90s and it was a very humble
affair indeed, despite being the home of the then most senior Buddhist
master in Vietnam, The Most Venerable Thich Tri Tinh. It was dusty and a
little ramshackle, having been originally constructed in 1954. The
large and quite unique satue of
Kwan Yin (
Quan The Am, the
Buddhist Bodhisattva of Mercy) was already in place, but she was installed on quite a shoddy and tacky little stand in the middle of a sad and muddy pond.
Van Duc has undergone quite a renovation.
The same statue is now housed in a solid and ornate construction, and
the temple's main prayer hall is cavernous, with incredibly high
ceilings and the capacity to seat hundreds of worshippers.
There
is a large monastic community, and the surrounding area is home to many
different Buddhist temples, as well as a Benedictine monastery of some
note.
If
you keep walking down the Tinh Lo 43 (the name of the road the temple
is on) and turn down the first No. 7 Road (there are actually two No. 7
Roads, one after the other) you will see a collection of 7 or 8 tiny
temples crammed onto a single country laneway. I have no idea why this
is, but there is obviously some historic reason for it.
Details:
Van Duc Temple (Chua Van Duc)
502 Tinh Lo 43
Khu Pho 5
P. Tam Phu
Q. Thu Duc
Ho Chi Minh City
The temple is about a 20 minute taxi ride from downtown Saigon.
It might be best to get the taxi to wait for you while you explore, as there aren't many taxis in this area.
