Giac Lam Pagoda, Ho Chi Minh City: History, What to See, Hours

Giac Lam Pagoda (Chùa Giác Lâm) is a working Buddhist temple at 565 Lac Long Quan street in Ho Chi Minh City, founded in 1744 and one of the oldest pagodas in the city. Travel guides say no ticket is sold, and you are expected to dress as you would for any place of worship, with shoulders and knees covered. It sits about 7.6 km by road from Ben Thanh Market, so plan on a Grab or taxi from District 1, and go in the morning or mid-afternoon, because in visitors’ videos the main hall is shut around midday.

Is Giac Lam the oldest pagoda in Saigon?

It is one of the oldest, but the title of “oldest” is disputed, so treat it with care. Giac Lam was founded in the spring of 1744, under the Nguyen lord Nguyen Phuc Khoat, when Ly Thuy Long, a layman from the Minh Huong community of Chinese descent, raised money to build it. That date comes from the Gia Dinh gazetteer of 1820, as historian Pham Hoang Quan explained in Tuoi Tre in 2024. It was first known as Cam Son, Son Can or Cam Dem. In 1774 the monk Vien Quang became abbot and gave it the name Giac Lam; he led it until 1827.

Several English-language articles from 2018 (VietNamNet and Viet Nam News) call Giac Lam the oldest pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City, and many tour sites and video titles repeat it. Other newspapers are more careful: VnExpress in 2019 and VietNamNet in 2025 call it “one of the oldest”, and Phap Luat TP.HCM gives the oldest title to Hue Nghiem pagoda, which many records date to 1721. No statement from the city’s culture department settles it, and the 1988 relic decision itself is not online. What is not in doubt is its rank: Giac Lam was listed as a national historical and cultural relic in 1988 (Decision 1288-VH/QD of 16 November 1988, according to VietNamNet), and it is regarded as the ancestral temple of the Lam Te (Linji) school of Zen in southern Vietnam.

One mix-up to avoid: Giac Vien is a different pagoda, down an alley further along Lac Long Quan in the former District 11. The names sound alike and the two temples share a lineage, but if you type “Giac Lam” into a ride-hailing app, check that the pin is at number 565.

What to see at Giac Lam Pagoda

Coming in from Lac Long Quan you walk down a long lane, past the street gate and through an inner gate; in visitors’ videos the parking area is on the left just after it. The grounds are bigger than the street front suggests and full of old trees. Across more than twenty vlogs the same thing comes up again and again: birdsong, shade, and very few people on an ordinary weekday. Tuoi Tre calls it a rare green temple in a densely built part of the city.

The seven-storey stupa

The first thing you see, just inside the gate on the left, is the Bao Thap Xa Loi, a hexagonal relic stupa of seven storeys with a white statue of Quan Am (Guanyin) at its foot. It is new compared with the rest of the pagoda: VnExpress reports that work began in 1970, stopped, and only resumed in 1993. According to Phap Luat TP.HCM, the seventh floor holds a relic of the Buddha.

Don’t count on climbing it. In visitors’ videos the upper floors are sometimes open and sometimes locked: one vlogger went up to the seventh floor on an earlier full-moon day but found the stairs shut on the day he filmed, another got up only after a monk unlocked the door. If you want the view over the grounds, ask politely at the office.

The main hall: columns, statues and plates

The old pagoda is laid out as three long halls side by side, which Phap Luat TP.HCM describes as the shape of the Chinese character for three: the main sanctuary at the front, then the lecture hall, then the refectory. The main hall is where to spend your time. It runs deep, held up by dark wooden columns carved with couplets in gilded Chinese characters; VnExpress counted 56 large ones. According to Tuoi Tre, the couplets are cut straight into the old wood, possibly during the first recorded rebuilding in 1804.

The altars are crowded with statues. VnExpress and VietNamNet put the number of old statues at 113, almost all wood with seven in bronze, carved by craftsmen from Binh Duong in the early 19th century. Among them are Amitabha, Shakyamuni, Quan Am, Ksitigarbha and a full set of the 18 Arhats along the walls. VietNamNet adds that more than 100 pieces are gilded, with a large Amitabha at the centre of a seven-tiered altar. You will see other counts online (112, 119); the 113 figure is the one the newspapers agree on.

Look up at the walls as you cross the courtyard. Rows of ceramic plates are set into the top of the main hall walls, more than 6,000 of them, and over 1,000 more decorate the Hong Hung patriarch tower beside it, more than 7,000 in all (VnExpress). Most came from the Lai Thieu kilns in Binh Duong, some from China and Japan, and they were added in the first half of the 20th century. VnExpress and VietNamNet both describe the collection as a Vietnamese record.

The Bodhi tree from Sri Lanka

The big Bodhi tree in front of the main hall came from Sri Lanka, not India, as some guides say. Phap Luat TP.HCM and VnExpress both date it to 1953, and Phap Luat names the monk who brought it: the Venerable Narada of Sri Lanka. In those videos a statue of the laughing Maitreya Buddha sits beneath the tree, and a small shrine nearby holds a Quan Am statue in coloured stone.

Quan Am mountain and the abbots’ tombs

Two more corners are worth the walk. One is a newer open-air shrine where a tall Quan Am statue stands in front of a large artificial rock mountain planted with bonsai; it is a newer addition and shows up in six of the vlogs. The other is the cluster of tomb towers of former abbots from the 19th and 20th centuries, in a quieter corner of the grounds.

Giac Lam Pagoda opening hours and entry fee

No ticket is sold, according to two travel guides (2023 and 2025): donation boxes stand in the halls, and giving is up to you. Neither the pagoda nor the city publishes a fee, and no newspaper we checked mentions one.

Opening hours are less clear. The pagoda does not publish them, and neither does the city. Guides give opening times between 5 and 7 am and closing around 9 pm, and one adds a lunch break of about 12:00 to 13:30. That break is the part to plan around: in five visitors’ videos, filmed between 2020 and 2026, people turned up around noon and found the main hall doors closed for the monks’ rest or prayers, with nothing to do but wait until early afternoon. In those videos people still walk the gardens, but the statues are inside. Aim for 8–11 am or after about 2 pm.

Visitors’ videos suggest more worshippers on the 1st and 15th of the lunar month and around Tet. On ordinary days the vlogs show few visitors.

What should I wear to Giac Lam Pagoda?

Cover your shoulders and knees: long trousers or a skirt below the knee and a top with sleeves. Travel guides that cover Giac Lam ask for this, so dress before you leave the hotel. Giac Lam is a working monastery and the ancestral temple of a Zen school, and monks live and chant here. Keep your voice down in the halls, don’t walk in front of people who are bowing, and if monks are chanting, watch from the doorway. If you are unsure whether to take your shoes off at a doorway, do what the locals in front of you do.

How to get to Giac Lam Pagoda from District 1

Giac Lam is in Bay Hien ward, the area older guides call Ward 10 of Tan Binh district; the wards were merged in July 2025, so you will see both names. By road it is 7.6–7.7 km from Ben Thanh Market and about 8 km from Nguyen Hue walking street, measured on OpenStreetMap. It is closer to the airport than to the centre: Tan Son Nhat is only about 5.5 km away, so it can fill a gap on an arrival or departure day.

• Grab, Be or taxi: the easy option. We could not find two reliable sources for the fare on this route, so check the price in the app before you book; ask for 565 Lac Long Quan.
• City bus: two stops named Chua Giac Lam sit on Lac Long Quan right outside the gate. Guides list route 27 from the Ben Thanh bus station (get off at the Lac Long Quan – Au Co junction) and route 145, which stops near the pagoda. Routes change, so confirm in a bus app before you go.
• Motorbike: ride down the lane from Lac Long Quan and park on the left after the inner gate.

What to combine with Giac Lam

Giac Lam is out on its own in the west of the city, so pair it with something on the way back. Thien Hau Pagoda in Cho Lon is the nearest of the three, 3.7–3.9 km by road. The Jade Emperor Pagoda in Tan Dinh is about 8 km across town; doing both in one day means two long rides, so most people pick one. The War Remnants Museum is about 7 km back towards the centre. For more ideas, see our list of things to see in Ho Chi Minh City.

If you would rather have a guide and a car for the day, our Ho Chi Minh City Classic Tour is a full-day small-group tour (up to 12 people, from $42 per person) with hotel pick-up in District 1. To be clear, it does not stop at Giac Lam: it covers Independence Palace, the cathedral and post office, the War Remnants Museum, Thien Hau Pagoda and Cho Lon market in Chinatown, and ends with a Saigon River water bus ride. Visit Giac Lam on your own the morning before or after.

Ho Chi Minh City Classic Tour

1 day

Start from:  $42 /person

Giac Lam Pagoda FAQ

Sources: Tuoi Tre Cuoi Tuan, Pham Hoang Quan on the pagoda’s history and poems (February 2024); VietNamNet on the statues and relic listing (May 2025); VnExpress International on the plates, statues, stupa and Bodhi tree (July 2019) and the Vietnamese edition (June 2019); Phap Luat TP.HCM, “5 oldest pagodas in Saigon” (February 2016); VietNamNet (2018) and Viet Nam News (2018); Thu Vien Phap Luat on the 2025 ward merger (Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15); entry, hours and dress from localvietnam and ahamove; bus routes from localvietnam, go2joy and ahamove; distances measured on OpenStreetMap; visitor observations from 41 YouTube channels (2020–2026), counted only where three or more channels agree. Featured photo: Phương Huy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, January 2022, cropped.