Chua Dieu Ngu Vietnamese Buddhist Temple

They charge you substantial money to have lunch with the Dalai Lama. If you want a picture taken with him they want $ 5,000! Even if the money goes toward the temple it still goes against principles of Buddhism. There’s no way His Holiness would approve any of this. How sad

For the Grand Opening of Chua Dieu Ngu, they had requested the presence of the Dalai Lama as their guest speaker and I was so excited to take my mom. The online reservation was thoroughly complicated. At first I signed up on their website and never received a reply about my tickets or the event info. Then weeks later I checked back to see that they had partner up with eventbrite and I reserved tickets for my mom in which I was able to print out… however DAYS before the event I received an email saying they are no longer working with eventbrite and that I had to email my name, number, address, etc to hopefully get the tickets. Well I received them in time for the event so I was going to let it go… but this fuss definitely foreshadowed more disorganization to come.
On the day of the event, my mom and I were two hours EARLY! To anticipate shuttle lines and getting into the event blah blah… I parked in the Westminster City Hall lot and we took a shuttle to be dropped off at the temple. I honestly didn’t even to see the temple because we were dumped at the end of some long line.
My poor mom and I waited for about an hour and a half in this endless line in hot scorching weather. There were plenty of people of diverse background all anxious to see and hear the Dalai Lama. Especially the cute old ladies who were aching with arthritis but still baring all the heat to be at the event. As we were turning the corner in the line and the end seemed near a crowd of angry people were walking back saying they are no longer letting people in. Yes… these poor old ladies WITH TICKETS were being turned away after waiting in the heat for HOURS!
So even though there was no room left for the event, the shuttles were still dropping more people off at the lines. I didn’t want to deal with the hoard of people trying to get back to their cars so I called a Lyft to take my mom and me back to Westminster City Hall.
I am not angry for myself… but upset for all of the poor elderly ladies who were so excited to see the Dalai Lama. These poor aching limping sickly ladies looked forward to this for months now… just to wait in a long line and ultimately turned away. The disorganization of this event is ridiculous. Calling it a disappointment is still an understatement. Why would they distribute more tickets than they had space for?
And just FYI the tickets for this event may have been «free» but plenty of people DONATED when getting these tickets…
Sorry Buddha. I know I should let it go… but I couldn’t and I had to be honest about my experience here.

This is the only temple that is spacious inside and outside of the facility. Others temple has limited of parking because it’s located next to a busy main street. This temple, is located in a residential area where’d parking is not limited and, if parking is limited around the temple, there’s more parking down the same street where walking distant is not too bad. Plus, the school near by allowed temple goer to park on their parking lots too.

Chua Dieu Ngu is very peaceful and welcoming. They are currently constructing a $ 6 million dollar temple that is adjacent to it. In June 2016 this temple will have a three-​day grand opening and I think the Dali Lama will be there. I am very excited

This was my last stop when I went temple hopping with my family for Lunar New Year/​Tet last week. There is ample street parking for this temple so you don’t need to worry about the crowd.
The temple is very decorated for the Tet season and there were a lot of people making their temple visits on Friday night. This temple takes care of dogs, there were 3 – 4 big dogs running around the temple ground. The temple praying room was huge and there were statues all around the temple ground. There was another separate room that is used for bigger ceremonies. This is unique compare to other temples because it is indoor, so the elderly people don’t have to worry about the cold, or the heat when they attend the big Buddhist events!
The difference between this temple (and other OC temples) and Chua Phat To in Long Beach is they charge you if you want to eat the vegetarian food at the temple.

When my father passed away, the monks from this temple came to pray for him, without asking for any fee like other places. The master monk here was very very kind and honest to us about all the rituals we had to do for the funeral as well as after the funeral for almost 1 year. They also kindly told us that they will surely keep my father’s urn safely, as long as we still need them to keep in their temple. The monks there are always willing to help, and suggest the best recommendation for our situations. We usually went to hear speeches here on Saturdays. He gave very meaningful, and short speeches as well. I really like the environment here. They also make great vege foods for lunch after the speeches as well. Great place for Buddhism worshipers.

unlike other big temples where they seem very «business like», this temple is quiet, feels very sacred and a good place to learn Buddhism.

The volunteers at Dieu Ngu cook the best veg food. I love the the bun rieu and bun hue, omg so delicioussssss. They usually sale a big portion for $ 5 (that’s include the greens, the vermicelli, spice.) on the weekend from ~9am to all gone. The selection is depends on what the volunteers make that day, but they are very good. Try them. I love the food. And if you have time, you can also spend sometime in the kitchen to help make the food (a great way to learn how to make veg food).

Chua Dieu Ngu is a Vietnamese Buddhist Temple. It is a very small one building temple but what they lack in size makes it up with their amazing vegetarian vietnamese cooking offerings that is available for sale during the weekends. They offer 6 traditional vietnamese noodle dishes likes Bun Rieu (a vermicelli with egg and tomato soup base); Bun Hue (a traditional spicy beef vermicelli noodle soup but this vegetarian version is just amazingly tasty and flavor is nice and robust) and But Cha Gio (traditional vermicelli noodle with egg rolls) plus another 3 dish which I could not remember. Parking is a bit limited here but there are plenty of street parking since it is located in an industrial area. Although a Buddhist temple is not the first place you would think to go for some delicious food but in this case, their vietnamese vegetarian cooking is pretty stunning and tasty. We will definitely come back for more the next time we are in town.