Sam Son Beach

The French knew how to choose a good place to cool off in summer.

From 1904 to 1906, the government of French Indochina planned Sầm Sơn as a resort. It built a road 16 kilometers long, linking the provincial seat of Thanh Hóa with the beach. On the Trường Lệ range they built holiday villas for French officials and for the emperors and mandarins of the Nguyễn court. The French called this place the jewel of the seas of Indochina. In 2006, Sầm Sơn celebrated 100 years of tourism.

In 2025, more than a century after those beginnings, Sầm Sơn welcomed 8.8 million visits. Its revenue for the year was 17.4 trillion dong. That is the scale of one of the major seaside destinations in the north of Vietnam.

But Sầm Sơn is not only a beach for swimming.

Stand facing the sea and look south, and the Trường Lệ range comes into view. It covers about 300 hectares and forms a natural screen at the end of the beach. Today the whole range is also protected as a landscape conservation area. On those hills stands a whole complex of ancient relics. In 1962 the complex was ranked a national relic. In 2019, it was raised to the rank of Special National Monument.

That special site has five parts. The first is the Trường Lệ range itself. The second is the Độc Cước Temple. The third is the Trống Mái rock. The last two are the temples of Cô Tiên and Tô Hiến Thành.

The Độc Cước Temple is the first stop, and the most striking. It sits on the Cổ Giải rock, a mass of hill that juts into the sea like the head of a turtle. A climb of about 40 stone steps leads to the temple gate. The Môn Lâu gate behind it was built in 1863. Inside the temple stands a rare wooden statue. The statue has only one arm and one leg.

The temple honors the god Độc Cước, and Độc Cước means one leg. At the temple and all along this coast, people still tell a folk legend about him. Long ago, a giant young man of great strength saw a fishing village suffering from the attacks of sea monsters. He took an axe and cut his own body in two. One half went out to sea to fight the monsters, and the other half stayed behind to guard the village. Moved by this, Ngọc Hoàng made him a god. Ngọc Hoàng is the Jade Emperor, the ruler of Heaven in folk belief. The tale says something about the hearts of fishermen who live from the sea. It speaks of giving one's whole self to protect the community. And that wooden statue with one arm and one leg, carved by craftsmen long ago, is a religious image rarely seen anywhere in Vietnamese culture.

The Độc Cước Temple was built in the time of the Trần dynasty, in the 13th or 14th century.

Farther along the mountain path is the Trống Mái rock. Two large boulders sit one on the other on the hillside, shaped like a rooster and a hen. The name is a folk name, given for that shape. An old tale says the two rocks were once a husband and wife who turned to stone, so people here see them as a symbol of the bond between husband and wife. The writer Khái Hưng took the rock as the inspiration for a novel. He belonged to the literary group Tự lực văn đoàn.

Farther still is the Cô Tiên Temple on the Đầu Voi rock. Beyond it stands a temple to the grand chancellor Tô Hiến Thành, a famous official of the Lý dynasty. He lived from 1102 to 1179 and served under three emperors. Later generations remember him as honest and upright. The temple was built at the end of the 12th century, more than 800 years ago. In Thanh Hóa there are as many as 72 temples to him. This one was recognized as a national historical and cultural relic in 1990. It has three parts: a front hall for worship, a middle hall and an inner sanctuary at the back.

Sầm Sơn beach is shaped like a crescent moon. It runs for about 9 kilometers, from the foot of the Trường Lệ range to the Quảng Cư area. The sand is fine, with no spots that are too deep, no boggy patches and no hidden rocks. The waves are moderate, and the saltiness and warmth of the water are just right.

Every year, on the 16th day of the second lunar month, the Cầu Phúc festival is held at the Độc Cước Temple. Its name means praying for blessings. There are palanquin processions, prayers for good fortune and offering rites. The festival opens the beach season at Sầm Sơn each year.

Since the French first chose this place for their summers, the crescent of sand has kept meeting the waves just as it did then. And on the Cổ Giải rock that juts into the sea, the wooden statue with one arm and one leg is still there in the Độc Cước Temple, guarding the fishing village as the legend tells.