AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Perched on the left bank of the red, silt-laden Red River in Yên Bái city, Ngọc Am Pagoda—formally Tùng Lâm Tự and known to locals simply as "chùa Am"—is the most important Buddhist centre in this north-western gateway province. A little more than a century old, it grew from a humble riverside shelter raised by boat traders praying for safe passage, and today anchors a corridor of temples and river shrines that pilgrims follow every lunar New Year.↗↗
What makes it worth a visit is the combination of location, living ritual and story: a solemn, old-style complex facing the water, its courtyards filled with incense and bell-sound, a temple that was bombed flat in 1966 and then rebuilt on exactly the same ground by popular demand.↗↗
From a river trader's shrine to a provincial temple
Ngọc Am began in the closing years of the Nguyễn dynasty (late 19th to early 20th century) not as a grand monastery but as a small "am"—a basic shelter of thatch, bamboo and leaves. Its founders were Vietnamese merchants and boat captains who plied the Red River between Hanoi, Hưng Hoá and Vĩnh Tường, hauling goods up to the Tuần Quán wharf and on to the head of the river at Yên Bái, alongside Chinese traders and Yunnan boatmen. To court safety and good trade on the waterways, they pooled money to raise the little shrine.
