Quan Cong Temple, Hoi An

How much is the Quan Cong Temple entrance fee?

There's no ticket just for the temple — it's one coupon of the Hoi An Old Town ticket. According to the Hoi An heritage centre's visitor notice from January 2026, there are two versions, both open to every visitor. 80,000 VND covers the Old Town, the Japanese Bridge or Quan Cong Temple, and two more sites of your choice. 120,000 VND covers the same bridge-or-temple slot, one museum and three more sites.

The ticket is valid for up to three days, so you can buy it one evening and use the coupons the next morning. Once every coupon is torn off, keep the stub — it's your pass back into the Old Town. Under-16s go free, and groups buying eight or more tickets get a free guide from the centre.

You'll still see older price lists and blogs calling the two prices a "foreigner" and a "Vietnamese" rate. The official notice doesn't make that split — the difference is how many sites you get. Booths sit at the entrances to the Old Town and take cash in dong; foreign Visa and Mastercard work in hotels and larger restaurants, but street food, markets and booths are cash-only, so carry small notes.

Which one to buy? If you only want the temple, a couple of houses and an evening stroll, 80,000 is enough. Add a museum and a third old house and the 120,000 ticket is still cheaper than a second ticket.

Quan Cong Temple opening hours

The heritage centre doesn't publish hours for the temple itself, and travel guides disagree — anywhere from 6:00–17:00 to 7:00–18:00. The safe window is roughly 7:00 to 17:00, every day. It's closed by the time the lanterns come on, so this is a daytime stop.

Go early, before about 9:30: it's cooler and quiet, and the market across the road is at its busiest and most fun. By midday it's hot and busier. On festival days locals come with incense and fruit — crowded, but you see the temple doing what it was built for.

The big day is the 24th day of the 6th lunar month, Quan Cong's festival, with offerings from the town's communities and a lion dance. The Western date moves every year and falls in summer — in 2025 it was 18 July.

What is Quan Cong Temple?

Locals call it Chùa Ông, roughly "the Lord's pagoda"; its formal name is Quan Công Miếu. It's dedicated to Quan Cong, the Vietnamese name for Guan Yu, a general of China's Three Kingdoms period who is worshipped across East Asia as the model of loyalty and honesty. In a trading port like Hoi An, that made him the patron of a fair deal — merchants swore oaths and settled disputes in front of his altar.

The temple was built by the Minh Huong community, descendants of Chinese settlers who had become Vietnamese. There's no exact founding date. The official heritage record notes a 1753 stele saying the temple was already "over a hundred years old", and a wooden board at the entrance dated 1653, so historians say it stood by 1653 at the latest. An imperial chronicle records that Emperor Minh Mang stopped here in 1825 and gave the temple 300 taels of silver. For a long time it was the spiritual centre of the whole town.

The layout is a group of halls around a square courtyard. The three-bay front hall runs along Tran Phu; covered galleries lead along both sides of the courtyard to the main hall at the back. The roof is glazed tube tiles, its ridge crowded with dragons and mythical beasts in broken-porcelain mosaic. According to the heritage record, the woodwork was done by carpenters from nearby Kim Bong village — a Chinese temple built by Vietnamese hands.

Steles in the courtyard walls record repairs in 1753, 1783, 1827, 1864, 1904 and 1966. There's never been a major rebuild, so what you see keeps its old form.

What to see inside

• The main altar at the back — the figure of Quan Cong, flanked by his adopted son Guan Ping and his shield-bearer Zhou Cang.
• Two horses on either side of the hall, one white and one red. The red one is Red Hare, Guan Yu's legendary mount. They're the photo everyone takes.
• Three wooden halberds — Guan Yu's "green dragon" blade, which the heritage record lists here in triplicate.
• Lacquered boards and couplets — more than 33 horizontal boards and 10 pairs of calligraphy panels, including verses Nguyen Nghiem, father of the great poet Nguyen Du, wrote in Hoi An in 1775.
• Stone steles in the courtyard walls recording the repairs, plus a big bell and drum.
• The roof ridge — look up from the courtyard to see the porcelain-shard dragons.
• Quan Am Pagoda — a Buddhist temple directly behind, on the same grounds, with its own entrance on Nguyen Hue Street.

Is Quan Cong Temple worth visiting?

It's small: 20 minutes covers the courtyard, the altar, the horses and the roof. If you've seen big Chinese temples elsewhere, the building alone won't blow you away. What makes it worth it is that it's Hoi An's oldest and most revered temple, and it's still in use — incense smoke, fruit offerings, locals bowing at the altar.

It's a clear yes if you're spending the bridge-or-temple coupon anyway. There's little to see inside the Japanese Bridge, so photograph it from outside for free and use the coupon here. If you're not buying an Old Town ticket at all, the temple alone isn't a reason to — wander Hoi An Ancient Town first and decide there.

It pairs best with breakfast: the temple at opening time, then noodles at the market opposite, then the Fujian hall and the old houses along Tran Phu before the heat builds.

Temple or bridge: which gets your coupon?

Ticket contents follow the Hoi An heritage centre's notice. Our take: photograph the bridge from outside and give the coupon to the temple.

Temples and shrines in Hoi An

Hoi An's temples and assembly halls with a YesGo score. Tap a column header to sort.

Nearby and on the way

39

Fujian Assembly Hall

Hoi An, Vietnam

30 min · Old Town ticket, 80,000–120,000 VND · 3 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Fujian Assembly Hall

44

Hoi An Central Market

Hoi An, Vietnam

45 min · Free entry · 3 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Hoi An Central Market

34

Hoi An Ancient Town

Hoi An, Vietnam

3 h · 80,000–120,000 VND; streets free · 5 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Hoi An Ancient Town

39

Tan Ky Old House

Hoi An, Vietnam

20 min · One Old Town ticket coupon · 7 min walk

Yes — add to my route: Tan Ky Old House

How to do it right

• Spend the bridge-or-temple coupon here and photograph the Japanese Bridge from outside — you get both on one ticket.
• Come at opening time: the temple is quiet and the market opposite is already in full swing.
• It shuts before dark — save the lanterns for later in the evening.
• The ticket lasts up to three days: buy it one evening, start with the temple the next morning.
• Covered shoulders and knees, quiet voices at the altar — it's a working temple.
• Carry small dong notes for incense and market breakfast.

Questions