Vietnam! Cao Dai Temple & Cu Chi Tunnels

After Checking out the bar scene, we decided to call it a night so we'd be awake for our Cu Chi Tunnels tour. The first half of the day was spent at the main Cao Dai Temple. It's a new, purely Vietnamese religion blending Buddhism, Hinduism, Confusionism, and even bits of Western religions. The temple was beautiful - so different to ancient temples that had started to all blend together after spending so much time in Asia. While those are dark, small, andcovered with Buddhas/figures with incese, this was so bright, airy, and new. The worshippers have to wear white and the monks wear colorful robes - which made for great contrast, and overall look of the service.

Next stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels. It's hundreds of miles of underground tunnels that stretch from the Cambodian border to Saigon and further. The intro video was another example of biased hate against the US with such sounds bites like "The American devils" and "hunting the American animals". Oh well, again this video was made too soon after the war. We got to go down into the tunnels, which were small and claustrophobic , and this is even after they've been widened for tourists! Also at the tunnels, they have old weapons (M16, AK47, machine guns) that you can shoot for about $1/bullet. This was the main attraction for me, because where else can I shoot an AK47 for $10/round?! I fired my round, nearly going deaf in the process since they don't have proper headphones, and just missed the prize by 1 bullet. If you hit the target 3 times you get a prize, but my skills are not that good. Yet.

That night Brad had an overnight layover on his way back to HK. We met up and enjoyed the bar scene until he ahd to head to the airport at 4am. The downside of most of the guesthouses in HCM is that they lock up at 11:30 so to get back in afterwards you have to ring the bell and wake up the owner so he'll unlock it. I felt bad disturbing him so late, but it had to be done.