Buddhist temples in urban areas of Vietnam often like to create a more ntatural atmosphere around the temple grounds. In Ho Chi Minh City, land is expensive and large pieces of land are hard to find or put together, so temples or pagodas must do what they can with limited space.
This temple in the Phu Nhuan District of HCMC extended its usable space for a grotto or mountain by building upwards against the side of the neighboring house.
There appear to be windows in the house behind the mountain strips, which raises some interesting questions about how this all came about.
