Hoi Khanh Pagoda

In the heart of Thủ Dầu Một, a pagoda stands still and watches everything change around it. The French came, and the pagoda was burned. The city grew, and the pagoda remained. Bình Dương merged into Ho Chi Minh City, and the pagoda is still here, on Yersin Street.

Hội Khánh Pagoda turns 285 years old in 2026. It is one of the most representative old pagodas of the Southeast region of Vietnam.

The story begins in 1741, in the reign of Emperor Lê Hiển Tông. The Zen master Đại Ngạn belonged to the Lâm Tế line. He built a thatched hermitage for his practice on a small hill in Thủ Dầu Một. Over time the hermitage grew into a pagoda. People called it Hội Khánh.

But in 1861, the French took Thủ Dầu Một and burned the pagoda to the ground.

Seven years later, in 1868, the Venerable Toàn Tánh Chánh Đắc rebuilt it. He did not build on the old site on the hill. He built at the foot of the hill, about 100 meters from where it had stood. That is where the pagoda is today. So the Hội Khánh Pagoda that stands today does not date from 1741. It dates from 1868. Most of its ritual objects, statues and relics come from the repairs that followed the rebuilding.

In 1993, the Ministry of Culture ranked the pagoda a National Historical and Cultural Monument.

The plan follows the style of the far south. There is a front hall, a main hall and a lecture hall, and the east and west wings are set as a pair, joined to one another. Together, the main hall, the chanting hall and the east and west side rooms cover about 700 square meters. Inside are finely carved openwork arches, horizontal boards and parallel couplets. The gilded wooden statues in the main hall were made by craftsmen of the Thủ Dầu Một area in the 19th century.

The most famous and most unusual feature of Hội Khánh Pagoda is a statue on a roof. It shows Shakyamuni Buddha entering Nirvana. Shakyamuni is the founder of Buddhism. The statue is 52 meters long and lies on the roof of a two-story building. In May 2013, the Asia Records Organization, based in India, recognized it as the longest statue of the Buddha entering Nirvana on a pagoda roof in Asia.

Every word of that title matters: on a pagoda roof, in Asia. It is not simply the longest in Asia. Asia has many other giant reclining Buddhas, in Thailand and Myanmar. But for a statue placed on a pagoda roof, Hội Khánh holds the record.

Yet the story few people know is not about the statue. It is about what happened inside this pagoda from 1923 to 1926.

In those years, a Confucian scholar from Nghệ An came to Thủ Dầu Một. He was Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, the father of President Hồ Chí Minh. He held the phó bảng degree. Phó bảng was a degree just below doctoral laureate in the royal examinations. There he befriended the scholar Phan Đình Viện, known as Tú Cúc. Above all, he grew close to the Venerable Từ Văn, then the abbot of Hội Khánh. The three men founded the Honor Society, Hội Danh Dự, right here in this pagoda.

The Honor Society was not an armed group. It was a circle of patriotic scholars and monks who kept in touch through the pagoda. They spread a sense of national spirit and mutual care, and they helped the poor while the country was still under colonial rule. That is why Hội Khánh is counted among what the south calls revolutionary pagodas of the early 20th century.

The grounds also hold four small-scale structures that recreate four holy sites of the Buddha's life. There is the Lumbini garden, where the Buddha was born. There is Bodh Gaya, where he reached enlightenment under the bodhi tree. There is the Deer Park, where he gave his first sermon, the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma. And there is Kushinagar, where he entered Nirvana. In this way the pagoda lays out a pilgrimage through the life of the Buddha in one small garden, without the need to travel all the way to India.

Since July 1, 2025, Hội Khánh Pagoda no longer belongs to Bình Dương province. Bình Dương merged into Ho Chi Minh City under a resolution of the National Assembly. The old Phú Cường ward joined its neighbors to form a new Thủ Dầu Một ward, and the pagoda now lies in that ward of Ho Chi Minh City. It is about 30 kilometers from the center of Ho Chi Minh City.

The pagoda has been burned, moved to the foot of the hill, and passed from Bình Dương into Ho Chi Minh City, yet it still stands quietly and watches everything change. Standing in the courtyard and looking up at the giant statue stretched along the roof, people understand why this small pagoda in Thủ Dầu Một holds a record for all of Asia.