Đặc khu Phú Quý, Lâm Đồng · Religious site
Temple of Master Sai Nai
Picture a rotating trophy, the kind you have seen handed from team to team after each season. Here the thing passed on is a set of royal decrees, and the teams are the nine villages of Phú Quý island: each village keeps them for a year, then hands them to the next.
Every year, on the master's feast day, his decrees are carried in procession to the Temple of Master Sài Nại (Đền thờ thầy Sài Nại) in Phú An hamlet, Phú Quý island. The temple is more than 300 years old and has been a provincial-level heritage site since 2010. According to the chronicle of Phú Mỹ village, the first shrine here was built of thatch, bamboo and earthen walls.
The royal decrees nine villages take turns keeping
The surprising part is that the man worshipped here was not from the island. Old tales say Master Sài Nại was a geomancer, and some say a Chinese physician. He landed on the island after a storm and stayed to make medicine and heal the sick. According to one temple keeper, when a rat-borne epidemic struck the island, the master searched the forests and the sea for remedies and taught people how to get rid of the rats. Are you curious why a stranger came to be honoured by a whole island as one of the deities who founded its villages? Islanders worship him together with Princess Bàn Tranh. Legend says she was a Cham princess exiled to the island who became the master's sworn sibling. The Nguyễn emperors granted the two of them 13 decrees of investiture in total (sắc phong: royal documents conferring official titles on a deity). Because of this story, the temple is seen as a trace of Vietnamese–Chinese cultural exchange in the island communities.
The complex includes a main gate, a flagpole, a screen wall, a võ ca (a front hall) and the main sanctuary, facing south-west. Its architecture is close to that of the island's đình and vạn (communal houses and fishermen's guild halls): a three-entrance gate, square halls with four-sided roofs, and ridges decorated with dragons, phoenixes and foliage in relief. The main sanctuary holds three altar cabinets. The central one, for the master, is gilded lacquered wood with the single character "Thần" (deity) in relief. The left cabinet honours the Tiền Hiền and the right the Hậu Hiền (the earlier and later worthies revered by the village). Look closely at the cabinet canopies and you will find two dragons contending for a pearl, birds and animals, apricot blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo, along with parallel sentences in Hán Nôm script.
Time and war left the temple in poor condition, and it was restored after 2023. But what keeps this place alive is not only its restored buildings. On the island, only this temple and the temple of the Princess are worshipped in rotation by the villages every year, under a custom set by the Bổn Điền management board. Islanders call the procession that brings the decrees here the Giao phiên kỵ Thầy ceremony (the master's rotation rite). The keeper of the incense and lamps here says it is the islanders' largest cultural and religious event. On ordinary days, visitors can still come in to look around and light incense. In a place where hamlets and communes have changed their names, the custom of handing on the decrees still circles through the villages and returns here every year. Which village is keeping them this year?
Enough to decide whether to go
- What it is
- Temple of Master Sài Nại, honoured by islanders as a deity who helped found their villages
- Where
- Phú An hamlet, Phú Quý island (now in Phú Quý special zone, Lâm Đồng province)
- Age
- More than 300 years; provincial-level heritage site since 2010
- Most worth seeing
- The three altar cabinets in the main sanctuary and their carved canopies
- Main festival
- The master's feast day, early in the fourth lunar month: the Giao phiên kỵ Thầy ceremony
- Today
- An active place of worship; on ordinary days visitors come to look around and light incense
From someone who has been
To see the temple doing what it exists for, come on the master's feast day early in the fourth lunar month, when processions from the villages bring the decrees back. On an ordinary day, take time in front of the central cabinet: that one character "Thần" on gilded lacquer is where a whole island sends its gratitude to a man who arrived as a stranger.
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Source
The name of the temple, its ranking as a provincial-level relic in 2010, its age of 'over 300 years', the 2023 restoration project, the architectural components, the orientation of the temple, the three altars, the death-anniversary festival on the 4th day of the 4th lunar month and the scene of visitors offering incense on ordinary days come from an article in Bình Thuận newspaper (now part of Lâm Đồng newspaper) of 19 Mar 2025. The origin of the shrine of Phú Mỹ village, the first shrine of thatch and bamboo with earthen walls, and the legend of the duối tree come from the Phú Mỹ village yearbook published in Lâm Đồng newspaper on 29 Dec 2023. The custom of villages taking turns to carry the royal edicts in procession and the total of 13 royal edicts conferred on the two figures come from Lâm Đồng newspaper (2017). That the temple and the tomb are two different places, together with the temple keeper's accounts, comes from Nông nghiệp và Môi trường newspaper (2022). The name of the ritual 'Giao phiên kỵ Thầy' (the turn-over of the Master's death-anniversary rites) and the story of sworn kinship with Princess Bàn Tranh come from Dân Việt newspaper (Nov 2022). The current administrative unit comes from Vietnamese Wikipedia (read 28 Sep 2026). The location was cross-checked between the Google Maps pin and Wikimapia, two points about 6 m apart; OpenStreetMap could not be checked. Some details have not been put on the page. The scene 'at the foot of Cao Cát mountain, jutting out into the sea', 'sea on three sides' and the fish pond next to it are described for the temple but are in fact the scene of the tomb area. The century in which the temple was built is not given because the sources contradict themselves. The number of edicts for Thầy alone is not given because newspapers state 5 or 8. The offerings and the 'reason for founding the temple' appear only on a ferry-ticket sales page. There is currently no usable photo: the open photo archives searched all lack a photo of the temple.
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