Blog - Vietnam day 2: Cao Dai and Cu Chi tunnels
Vietnam day 2: Cao Dai and Cu Chi tunnels
On day 2, September 23rd, we had a booked bus tour that started at 8:30 AM. We woke up early and started the day by having breakfast at Hotel Continental's lovely inner garden.
Then we took a taxi to take us to Kim Café. The tour was only 240000 dong (approx. $12 USD or ¥1200) for the bus ride, not including the entrance to Cu Chi tunnels (75000 dong = $4 or ¥400).
The first destination was to be the Cao Dai temple, located some 100km away. Here are some photos taken along the way.
And then we arrived to the Cao Dai temple, located in Tây Ninh. Cao Dai is a religion founded in Vietnam in the 1920's, and takes roots from Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and others. It has over 2 million adepts within Vietnam, and there are temples in places like Sydney (Australia) and Los Angeles.
The temple is in itself a tourist attraction especially because it's very colorful, and also the religion's God, the Divine Eye, is represented in various places making it very mystic to the uninitiated. Daily masses can be watched by tourists from a balcony in the temple.
First here are photos of the temple's exterior:
And here of the interior, where a session was taking place:
(I have a short video of this too, but it's been eaten by Picasa. Hopefully I can recover it later.)
Next we had a quick stop at a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. The food was alright!
That was on our way to our next attraction, the Cu Chi tunnels. Those tunnels were created by the Vietnamese during the Viet Nam war, to hide from the Americans. They contained pretty much everything necessary to live underground. Entrances were very hard to find, and the lands also contained lots of deadly traps for the unsuspecting intruder.
Now converted into a touristic attraction, this features a tour of the land, with installations showing how the people lived, an old destroyed tank, various traps, and a quick visit of a tunnel. The tunnel, despite having been made twice the size it used to be to accommodate the contemporaries, is still quite tight. Not going back in there..!
This is also the only place in Viet Nam where firearms can be fired. Visitors can pay a fee to shoot some guns from the war days. Some of our group seemed to have went mainly for that, but no thanks for me. :)
The way back home to Ho Chi Minh was rather calm, I just took lots of photos of the scenery... and more scooters! Try to find the one with 5 people!
Back in town, we took a taxi to restaurant Quan 94 (94 Dinh Tien Hoang, District 1) famous for its crab dishes. We had fried soft-shell crabs, fried rice with crab, fried spring rolls (with more crab?). All very delicious!
Back to the hotel, that was it for the day!
View the GPS route from Ho Chi Minh to Tây Ninh and to Cu Chi tunnels (Gmaps Pedometer)
View the GPS route from Cu Chi tunnels back to Ho Chi Minh (Gmaps Pedometer)
Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr
Posted on October 12, 2009 at 23:44 | Tweet
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Vietnam day 2 (cont'd): Cao Dai mass video
My video of a Cao Dai mass that I mentioned in my previous entry has been recovered thanks to Easy...
October 15, 2009 at 22:02