Truc Lam Ban Gioc Pagoda

Phật Tích Trúc Lâm Bản Giốc Pagoda leans against the slope of Phia Nhằm Mountain. Bản Giốc Falls lie about 500 meters away, and the main side of the pagoda faces the whole sweep of them. On the right rises the mountain. In front flows the Quây Sơn River. Farther off runs the line of the border.

According to the Cao Bằng tourism information center, this is the first pagoda built on the northern frontier of the country. It was inaugurated on December 15, 2014, in Đàm Thủy commune, in Cao Bằng. President Trương Tấn Sang attended the grand ceremony, which the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha organized.

The pagoda covers about 3 hectares. It has a main temple area, a landscaped area, and a system of steps that links the different levels of the slope.

Climbing up from the Tam Quan gate, a visitor sees the architecture first. The pagoda is built in a purely Vietnamese style, with frames of lim ironwood, old-style bricks and tiles, roofs with traditional upswept corners, and couplets written in Vietnamese. The style was a deliberate choice, and it carries cultural and symbolic meaning for a building in the border region.

The pagoda's centerpiece is its bell tower, which holds the Đại hồng chung Thiên Bảo, a great bell. The bronze bell weighs 1.5 tons and hangs in a bell tower of its own. Its sound carries out over the Quây Sơn River and the fields along the border.

The worship area holds the Tam Bảo hall, a hall for the Patriarchs, and a hall for the Mother Goddess. The Three Jewels are the Buddha, his teaching, and the Buddhist community. Nearby stands a courtyard with a statue of Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. The province's tourism portal also records a hall honoring President Hồ Chí Minh and General Võ Nguyên Giáp. The hall brings the spiritual and the history of the revolution together in one place.

One part of the pagoda deserves notice: a temple to Nùng Trí Cao, honored there as a hero and described as a cultural symbol of the 11th century in the land of Cao Bằng. The small temple stands inside the pagoda grounds.

From the courtyard, a visitor looking out sees the whole view at once: Bản Giốc Falls, rice fields, mountains and green trees stretching away to the line of the border. Two things that are often thought of as separate, the spiritual and the natural landscape, lie side by side here within a single gaze.