Lunar New Year in Vietnam Pilgrimage: Gia Lao Temple
Yesterday I joined thousands of Vietnamese to hike up to a temple built in and around the caves of Gia Lao mountain.
It’s the Lunar new year 2016 here and the whole country basically shuts down for a week – with many people heading out of the big cities to the countryside to take pilgrimages such as these.
Fun fact – it’s also the year of the monkey. Could be a naughty year. 😉
Lunar New Year 2016 Pilgrimage
It’s hard to find any information online about this mountain as it’s not a big tourist attraction among foreigners. I was the only white person out of literally thousands and thousands of people – I haven’t been stared at this much in Asia for ages!
The mountain is famous in the Dong Nai province for the mysteries giant Buddha that reportedly appeared on top of the mountain. Nowadays Dong Nai has a big population of Buddhists and so many make the trip to the mountain to pray at the temple.
The moment is also know for the three trees that merge into one. I didn’t quite work out what the significance of it was but overall it looked quite epic!
It was an amazing experience and I took the opportunity to film a video of my own journey over the last 2 years – living in and visiting over 7 countries in Asia during that time.
Happy new year everybody!