Many people will recall the French Village, the Golden Bridge when one mentions Ba Na Hills but do you know that there's a number of temples in the theme park as well?
One of them would be Linh Ung Pagoda, which was walking distance from the Golden Bridge and the Le Jardin D'amour Flower Garden that were of different theme! Walking towards the temple; there were in fact three Linh Ung Pagodas (yes, same name) in Da Nang, and they were said to create a triangular zone to protect the City of Da Nang from natural disasters like typhoons.
Rules and regulations, in Vietnamese.
Guess it would be quite standard.
"Standing 27 meters tall and 14 meters in diameter on a 6-meter-tall white lotus", it would be very hard to miss the above statue of Buddha Shakyamuni that stood atop a 1,500 meters tall hill.
The octagonal base also housed eight pictorial panels that told the life of Buddha Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism. Not sure how much it can divulge as there didn't seem to be any words.
Found an opening into the base of the statue!
Even though I was alone, I ventured in only to find a space that was underutilized. From what I saw, it was more like a store room. Such a bad use of space...
Staircase near the statue that led down to an open platform. Sorry, the business student in me was thinking it would be lucrative to have a food / drinks vendor, or even some vending machines on site since the cool weather, and the peaceful surrounding would be advantageous for "business". I was extremely impressed with the above; a green dragon straddling a water feature. It looked so insync with the fake hill although the statue of Guanyin was somewhat out of place.
This temple wasn't limited to just the statue; let's continue to proceed downwards. Since this was covered in my admission tickets to Ba Na Hills SunWorld theme park, I am sure going to explore as much as I could.
French Village right behind. Such a strong juxtaposition! Like a clash of two very different cultures. p.s. you can also see the tracks for the alpine coaster.
Official temple compound, where the praying would take place. I read from the web that there was a unique "pine tree with three different kinds of leaves" in front of the temple. Is that the one in the above photograph?
More photographs.
Chinese name of Linh Ung Pagoda. In Chinese history, there is indeed a famous temple with the same name and those of Chinese ethnicity would recall that there is a famous monk called Jigong. The temple he was in was also called Lingyin Temple.
Another staircase past the grand entrance archway. It's supposed to overlook Da Nang City but as you can see, the clouds made everything turned into a mystical space. I didn't venture any further given the laziness to climb up and down. The entrance archway. Despite the influences from China, I do think that there are design differences between the temples of China and Vietnam. Some can be quite subtle. Can you spot them?
Two paths to go back. The original one I came one was on the left whereas the right would bring me up to on a "mountainous" track, for which I do not know how long it might take.
Right it shall be!
Mountain not that high.
Nothing much worth sharing, except for maybe this stone tower that had an altar in front yet seemed to honor no statue. That was a line of golden characters but I didn't step closer.
Back on the same level as the humongous buddha statue.
I actually walked out from here. I am not sure about it but the dragons could have been converted from snakes. As the saying goes, a snake can elevate to a dragon with extensive cultivation!
Walking out of Linh Ung Pagoda.
Journey to the West appeared to be popular in Vietnam; aside from spotting the iconic characters at Ninh Binh, they were also on display at Linh Ung Pagoda. Gosh, didn't realize the gentleman saw me taking his photo with the pig character, Zhu Bajie! Paiseh!
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