Vietnam Part 2 : Caodai Temples and Cu Chi Tunnels!

Posted: May 12th, 2009 | Author: faddy | Filed under: Travel | Comments Off

Waking up bright and early the morning after our first day at Ho Chin Minh which we spent planning our itinerary for the next five days, we were greeted by a gargantuan throng of people all milling around and queuing up to get onto their respective buses.

Although the crowd was a mix of people who had booked tours from the many different agents all lined up along the busy road, I noticed that Sinh Cafe had the most buses and passengers, which I think is a good reflection of how favored they are amongst the tourists residing around the area :)

The bus we boarded arrived ten minutes after the scheduled timing and it was SUCH a relief to be able to board it and realize that the sitting bus was really, really comfortable and that the three of us had been assigned with seats right up front.

Once everyone was settled down (took less then 5 minutes), the bus started moving off to our destination and we were greeted by our tour guide, Moe, who is so damn cute! Hahaha. Besides his cute little dimpled smile which got the girls all giggly, his accented English was just so cute! “Ok I’m going to correct all your money and I will buy you all the tickesh first!“

Our first stop was a “Handicapped Factory” (which we think means that the workers are handicapped, not the factory hmm) which I must admit was not written in the tour’s itinerary but must have been included to serve as an alternative source of income for Sinh Cafe. Rather dubious but because the rest of the day kicked ass… I’ll let it pass.

So anyway, as you can see from the above table set up, you might be wondering what the hell the eggs are doing there. Well, the eggs ARE the paintings! The workers crush them up, paint them, and painstakingly pasted them on boards to become artworks like the below!

Seriously I wonder how long it took them to complete one artwork. Unfortunately since it was the holidays, I think that’s the reason why no one was working except for the cashier (kesian dia kene kerja yer…) and the bitchy manager overseeing the whole factory as seen in the picture below:-

Ok that’s just Atikah Totot hehehe. Muka step mau kene taplek. So anyway, we boarded the bus yet again for a long grueling (exaggerating much) ride to the Cao Dai Temple which left our bums sore and aching.

As my two Totots slept peacefully, their heads bobbing to the tune of honks as the driver warned of the bus’s presence to the millions of motorbikes around, I found myself glancing out the window to see vast green fields littered with random houses or huts and lazy cows grazing. Every few minutes or so, loud big banners or billboards advocating communism invaded the peaceful hues of greens and blues.

Around ninety minutes later, we finally reached the second destination on the tour – the Cao Dai Temple. *Cao Dai is a relatively new, syncretist, monotheistic religion, officially established in the city of Tây Ninh, southern Vietnam, in 1926. The term Cao Dai literally means “high place.” Figuratively, it means that highest place where God reigns.

We were given around an hour to explore the temple ourselves and to watch a ceremony that was going on. Personally I think that Cao Dai is like a rojak religion because they had statues of many entities, like for example Guanyin, Buddha, Confucious and even Jesus Christ.

Also, arranged all around the temple and at the highest peak of their altar (as seen in above picture) is a Divine Eye, which kind of reminds me of the ‘All-Seeing Eye’, a Masonic representation of Great Architect the Universe.

We were given only two rules before we entered the temple. One, to not walk in front of a person in prayer (like in Islam) and two, to not take photos of each other in the temple. As the prayers commenced, a choir of a hundred or so Cao Dai believers singing in unison to the same chant, i felt it was best they added a third rule – that the bloody tourists shut the hell up. So bloody noisy, no respect at all!

Halfway through the ceremony, we had to excuse ourselves as our bus was due to leave for our next destination – Cu Chi Tunnels. As you can see from the above picture, the rain was starting to pour :(

Oh! And meet our new friend from the People’s Republic of China – Magnificent (ok actually she has a mandarin name, but we only remembered the translation of it hahahaha)! Remember I said the three of us were seated up front? Well the seat next to me was taken by Magnificent and during our lunch break, seeing her sit all alone, we invited her to sit with us and we became fast friends!

So under the dark cloudy gray skies that were just waiting to pop a second round of showers on our head, we reached Cu Chi tunnels after another long bus ride. *The tunnels are an immense network of connecting underground tunnels located in the Cu Chi district and are part of a much larger network of tunnels that underlie much of the country.

They were actually used by Viet Cong guerrillas as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous guerrilla fighters. Therefore, to me, being able to explore the place was already an uber cool thing as I am walking in a really important part of history!

After paying our entrance fees of around US$5, we were all made to sit in this hut to watch a documentary on the tunnels, an introduction to the place that we were going to explore. Atikah and I couldn’t stop laughing at the choice of words in the propaganda-laden video.

I don’t remember the exact words used, but they were along the lines of “... the crazy devil of Americans started killing everything on the land, even innocent children going to school, gentle ladies working in fields, and even the poor little ducks…” HAHA the Angmoh lady in front of me was practically squirming in her seat with her eyebrows raised throughout I tell you.

Chilup….

Baaaaa!

After the documentary, Moe hurriedly rush us out to give us a tour of the tunnels in order to beat the imminent downpour. It was so darn interesting and worth the money! Look at what we did!

Saw innocent patches of grass morph into deadly spikes that you will be stuck on forever and ever and ever if you happen to step on it…

Made new friends with the Vietcong fighters who lived up till today!

Made new friends with a cute Vietnamese man who…

… taught us how to use a real Ak-47 with live bullets! WAKAKAKA. I’ve shot a machine gun, have you?

Crawled and wriggled in a 90metre long tunnel, knocking our heads, scraping our knees and breaking our backs in the process.

Without and with flash. Told you it was small and dark! At some places, the height was even shorter and we had to go on our knees and shuffle through instead of bending down while walking.

Ate sweet potatoes with the rest of our group under a tentage in the pouring rain. So romantic!

Huhuhu visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels is a definite MUST DO for anyone visiting Vietnam. Sadly for us, due to the thunderstorm, we had to really breeze through everything but hmm even then the experience was still as thrilling :) Must go hmmkay!

We ended the day back at Saigon walking around with Magnificent to look for a halal pho noodle outlet but gave up and ended up eating… Indian food AGAIN *pukes* It was interesting talking to Magnificent about our different cultures, teaching her how to eat the food using her hands and trying to communicate using Basic English.

Hmm, I know I always complain about the number of foreign workers in our country and how I get so irritated by them. Upon meeting Magnificent, I conclude that it’s not the country but the people themselves! If more of the foreign workers who enter Singapore are like her, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much tension in the country with regards to the immigration policy.

She was always eager to learn English, learn about the culture and was always ever so friendly, smiley and wanting to lend a helping hand. For example, upon seeing the lenses of Atikah’s camera, she went berserk and took out her camera cleaning kit and went on to clean it for Atikah, which took a good ten minutes. So nice right?!

We liked her so much that we insisted on walking her back to her hostel on the other side of the backpacker district, before the three of us walked back to Luan Vu, stopping for a little shopping along the way of course ;)

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So yeah thus concludes my Day 2 in Vietnam – definitely more action-packed and filled with activities and stories as compared to the day before which was quite the wet blanket. From Day 2 onwards, things could only get better :) Keep watch for my upcoming blog entries kids! *wipes of beads of sweat on forehead after the typing marathon*

(Blogger’s Note : *Text explanations of Cao Dai and Cu Chi Tunnels from Wiki)