Perfume Pagoda

Picture stepping out of “Em đi chùa Hương” (“Going to Perfume Pagoda”), a song you may already have heard, and into a real boat leaving Đục wharf, heading up the Yến stream between limestone peaks named Con Voi (Elephant), Mâm Xôi (Sticky-Rice Tray) and Con Gà (Rooster). The song was set to music from the poem “Chùa Hương” by Nguyễn Nhược Pháp. Earlier, Chu Mạnh Trinh wrote “Hương Sơn phong cảnh ca”, a sung poem in the traditional hát nói form that now appears in Vietnam’s tenth-grade literature textbook. And in the spring of 1922 the poet Tản Đà, too short of money to join the festival, wrote a poem about rau sắng, a wild vegetable this area is known for.

Perfume Pagoda: the old lives in the stone, the living still take the boat

“Chùa Hương” (Perfume Pagoda) is the popular name for the Hương Sơn complex in Hương Sơn commune, Hà Nội: close to twenty temples, pagodas and caves spread across limestone hills, ranked a Special National Relic in 2017. Are you curious what a place written about this much still keeps in real life? The answer comes in two halves. Thiên Trù Pagoda, known as the Outer Pagoda, is where the traditional route continues on foot after leaving the boat at Trò wharf. The pagoda’s own account says that in 1467 King Lê Thánh Tông rested his troops in this valley and, reading the stars, found it lay under the Thiên Trù constellation, so he gave it that name. Most of the Thiên Trù you see today, though, is rebuilt: French troops burned it in 1947 and 1948, it was bombed in 1950, and reconstruction began in 1989. What remains from earlier times is the stupa garden, including the seventeenth-century terracotta Viên Công stupa, and a bell from the Tây Sơn period cast with four Chinese characters reading “Hương Tích động chung” (bell of Hương Tích cave). Rebuilding is nothing new here: Chu Mạnh Trinh himself took part in restoring this pagoda.

The other half is inside the rock. The Inner Pagoda is Hương Tích cave, reached through a large gate and down 120 stone steps to a mouth as wide as a dragon’s jaws. On the rock wall are a stele showing worship here since the seventeenth century, and the five carved characters “Nam thiên đệ nhất động” (the finest cave under the southern sky), dated 1770 and said by tradition to be in the hand of Lord Trịnh Sâm. Among the stalactites stands a statue of Quan Âm, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, carved from blue-grey stone in the Tây Sơn period. A Buddhist legend tells that Quan Âm, in the form of Princess Diệu Thiện, practised for nine years and reached enlightenment in this cave, which is why it is called Hương Tích, “fragrant traces”. People long ago named the stalactites in a farmer’s vocabulary: rice stack, silkworm tray, cocoon frame, gold tree, silver tree. Some have been worn smooth by years of visitors’ hands.

So what does this heritage mean today? Perhaps that it is still used as a real place of worship. Hương Sơn remains an active tùng lâm, a Buddhist monastic complex, and most festival-goers are worshippers who return every year. The Buddha does not stand alone here: the pagodas have shrines to the Mother Goddess, and Cửa Võng Temple honours Bà Chúa Thượng Ngàn, the Lady of the Upper Forest who watches over the mountains. By local telling, the festival’s opening day was once the villagers’ day for “opening the forest” early in the first lunar month. And for the 2026 festival, tickets were sold electronically and checked by QR code, while people still took the boat as generations before them did.

Timeline

1. 1922And in the spring of 1922 the poet Tản Đà
2. 1950it was bombed in 1950
3. 1989and reconstruction began in 1989
4. 2017ranked a Special National Relic in 2017
5. 2026And for the 2026 festival

Enough to decide whether to go

What it is

The Hương Sơn complex: close to twenty temples, pagodas and caves; an active Buddhist monastic complex

Where

Hương Sơn commune, Hà Nội; the map pin sits at Thiên Trù Pagoda (the Outer Pagoda)

Old things worth seeing

The “Nam thiên đệ nhất động” inscription, the blue-grey stone Quan Âm statue, the Tây Sơn-period bell, the Viên Công stupa

Getting there

Boat from Đục wharf up the Yến stream to Trò wharf; from Thiên Trù to Hương Tích cave by mountain path or cable car

Tickets

Fees apply: a scenic-site ticket and a boat ticket at Đục wharf; the cable car is ticketed separately

Festival season

Spring, from after Tết (Lunar New Year) until around the third lunar month