Cao Dai Great temple and Cu Chi Tunnels - 3/12/08

Cu Chi tunnel - getting through these tunnels is HARD work!

Disappearing into one of the camouflaged entrances to the tunnels

Cao Dai Temple

Cao Dai

Cao Dai temple

The backpacker district of Saigon is filled with companies offering tours to wherever you want to go, since the Cu Chi tunnels were a bit of a mission to get to by yourself I booked myself on a day tour. The bus follows a heavily travelled tourist route where you feel very much like a herd of sheep. Stopping first at the handicraft centre where victims of agent orange create magnificant peices of art by hand. The key to this enterprise is to walk you through the workshop first and then into the showroom where the finshed pieces shine on the walls and you want to buy everything. I gave in to the ploy and bought a piece for home - I am such a sucker as i am sure the prices are targeted to the tourist and significantly higher than what you would pay at the market.

Anyways, the tour takes you to the Cao Dai temple in time for prayer - this is a religion that brings together the major religions in Vietnam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity. It is a very colourful temple using a lot of pastel shades which I am yet to find out their significance.

The tunnels of Cu Chi are sobering and provide a real insight into the VC. Although some of the exhibits are comic in their characture and mechanical operation they are none the less interesting detailing the traps and tactics used during the war. The short 120m trip through the actual tunnels gives you a real appreciation as to how hard it would have been to spend any length of time under ground. You emerge hot, sweaty and feeling like you have run a half marathon.