Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels...

Today I did a little tourist adventure. It was quite a lengthy ride, but after a couple of hours I got to the Cao Dai (I say it cow die) temple. Cao Dai is a religion that is a combo pack of religions. It takes teachings from Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Catholicism. It believes that all religions are the same in principle and Cao Dai means "High Tower", which represents God.

It was interesting to watch though I felt a bit like I was intruding but they didn't seem to mind.











The Cu Chi Tunnels are an underground system of tunnels in which the Cu Chi people took refuge as well as used to fight. This tour was difficult to stomach... they kept talking about how they would hide from American soldiers. They showed the torture traps they used on the American soldiers. It was really strange on this tour hearing that the Americans were the "bad guys".
A lot of the housing and facilities were underground- some completely underground. There were three levels to the tunnels: 1st- housing and basic tunnels about 3 meters under ground, 2nd- tunnels about 6 meters underground- some were so narrow that a Viet soldier would have to belly crawl to get through and it was a struggle for them, 3rd- tunnels about 9 meters deep. At this level there were more traps in case U.S. soldiers somehow got in. Some tunnels were even connected to the Saigon river so they could access by swimming down underneath the water and up into a tunnel.
The tunnel entrances were very difficult to spot. They were incredibly little. Many people in our group couldn't fit in them.

These were horrific to see. The second trap used to be used to catch tigers... here it was used to catch and kill American soldiers. They showed us crude device after device. The jungle was so thick there. I can't even to begin to imagine what hell all of the people- Viet and American- suffered while being there. This visit was quite haunting.