I have just completed a day trip to the Cao-Dai Temple and the Chu Chi tunnels. The Cao Dai follow a mixture of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and Confuciusism. Talk about putting your eggs across the baskets. They have occupy a walled village about 100km outside Saigon, and we got there in time to witness the daily prayer meeting. Not that exciting, but a few cool buildings and dragons. And dragons are fantastic.

The Chu Chi tunnels are a network (100km) of tunnels built by the people in Chu Chi to fight the American Imperialist invaders. They can go up to 30m underground, and are at points so tiny that only 1 skinny VC guy could crawl through it. Thus fat burger munching imperialists could not give chase down the tunnels, and relied instead on B52 carpet bombing and Agent Orange. Having crawled through merely 30m of the tunnels today, I felt claustrophobic, and I would hate to think what it would be like to live underground for 10 years. They had kitchens, hospitals and military prep rooms, and the kitchens were designed carefully so that the smoke did not escape during the day, and thus they remained largely undetected. The American hatred is still visible here. Our tour guide was particularly bitter, and after seeing the effects of Agent Orange on the people (more tomorrow, when I got to the museums) you can see why. These people went through hell to defend their country whilst living underground eating Tapioca.
- posted by Daniel @ Sunday, May 09, 2004