Cao Dai Temple & Cu Chi Tunnels

We set out on an SAS trip to the Cao Dai Temple (pronounced "cow dye") and the Cu Chi ("coo chee") Tunnels. All sorts of conveyances were on the road: a motorized cart carrying steel, massive loads of just-harvested peanuts, and a motorbike filled with Jackfruit.


Steve and Barek looked over the candy at our rest stop.
After a three-hour journey, we arrived in the town of Tay Ninh and ate a lunch which included the traditional Vietnamese Pho, a noodle soup containing vegetables and pork.

Tay Ninh is the headquarters of Caodaism, an indigenous religion Steve described in our previous post. This temple is one of the most striking and extravagant in Asia. We were glad to be there during a service so we could hear the musicians and chanters and observe the people united in prayer.

Followers of the Cao Dai religion must attend at least one service every 24 hours. The temple offers services at 6am, noon, 6pm, and midnight. Here a woman bikes away after the noon service.

Next we headed to the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 200-kilometer network of underground tunnels created and used by the Viet Cong forces during the wars against the French and the Americans. In the first two photos, Steve lowers himself into a tunnel that was actually enlarged for the sake of tourists. He crawled through this tunnel, but the rest of us waited for the even larger tunnel, which was still quite tight.


Here Charis and Barek attempt to get into one of the real tunnels, which were too tight even for them.

Further down the path through the jungle our tour guide shows us shoes that the Viet Cong made out of old tires. The footprint on the shoe is turned the reverse direction so that the soldiers could elude the enemy. The workers above are making the same style of shoes for tourists to buy.

The entire Cu Chi experience was surreal. The area included an odd array of fake Viet Cong soldiers set up at various locations in the woods and several demonstration stations of Viet Cong traps used during the war. Tourists could take photos on American tanks and there was a firing range where, for a price, you could fire an AK-47 or an M16. The shots rang out throughout the jungle and our tour guide recounted times when American vets had returned to see the Cu Chi area and had not been able to handle the gunfire from the tourist firing range. Even for us, hearing those shots in the Vietnam jungle was quite vivid.

We heard lots of interesting stories about North and South Vietnam and the war, but will share those in person.

The day had been long and hot: temperatures in Vietnam are in the upper 90s with 100% humidity. We showered and went into Saigon for an eclectic meal of Vietnamese and American food at what seemed to be the Howard Johnson's of Vietnam. SAS students took our picture in front of the People's Committee Building, an emblematic structure of Saigon originally built as a hotel in 1908, and now home of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Party.

Here is a short clip of the Cao Dai service: