January 16, 2007
Rest Day Ho Chi Minh City: Cao Dai and Chu chi tunnels
We are to be at the tour office by 8am. At 7, we have breakfast and drop off our laundry and make our way to the office. There are several buses and lots of backpackers, there is confusion as to which is our bus.
We are told to wait, then about 8:30am we scurry to a bus. There are only a few people on the tour: an English couple, an Australian mother with 4 children-all blond, an American math professor and his friend and a Vietnamese man. It's rush hour in Saigon and its slow progress out of the city and a long ride through similar/familiar countryside. We arrive at Cao Dai about 11:45, in time to look around outside for about 10 mins before needing to be in the balcony for the 1200 service...then back to the bus by 12:15.
Cao Daism is Vietnam's most interesting indigenous religions. The church "built between 1933-1955...is a combination of conflicting architectural idiosyncrasies of a French church, a Chinese pagoda, Hong Kong's Tiger Balm gardens and Madame Trussau's Wax Museum" (per Lonely Planet). The religion itself is a fusion of secular and religious philosophies of East and West....includes aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Native Vietnamese spiritualism, Christianity and Islam. Cao Dai (high tower or palace) is a euphemism for God; based on the Buddhist ideal of "the good person" and ultimate goal to escape the cycle of reincarnation.
Back in the bus we drive about half hour and stop at a local restaurant for lunch. Then back in the bus for another 1+ hour drive to the Chu Chi tunnels near the village of Ben Dinh. The Viet Cong developed techniques to make the tunnels difficult to detect or disable. Wooden trap doors camouflaged, "dien bien phuh kitces" which exhausted smoke through vents many meters away from the cooking site. First we saw a 20minute propaganda video about how the tunnel network was an impressive architectural feat and helped defeat the ruthless Americans.
The tunnels covered 30-40km from HCMC, a large rural area and allowed the VC to communicate and coordinate surprise attacks, even within the perimeters of the US Military base at Dong Du (now a military school). There was one small trap door to crawl into to see a tunnel. And sample camps, cooking area, weapon making. We crawled through one tunnel. In the distance we could hear gunfire from the nearby shooting range giving a sense of fighting in the jungle.
Back in the bus for a 3 hour drive back to the city depending upon traffic. We arrive back at the tour office close to 7pm. We eat supper and pick up laundry and back to the hotel.
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