Cultural Day

Today our team spent time on tour to Tay Ninh to see Cao Dai Holy See and then to the Cu Chi tunnels.  This was a bit of a last minute change to our team itinerary, as our arrival date at the build city was delayed by one day.  We were picked up at our hotel at 8:30am and headed out on a 2.5 hour drive to Tay Ninh.  Along the way we stopped at a local handicraft shop where people were making lacquer products.  Lacquer is a huge industry in Vietnam and involves quite a process.  Everything from painting designs, adding broken egg shells and sea shells that are precisely applied to create images and then applying multiple layers of lacquer that is repeatedly sanded and cleaned...sometimes it takes up to 14 coats of lacquer before it is ready to be sold.

 From here we went to Tay Ninh where we arrived just in time to see the noon hour Cao Dai religious ceremony taking place inside the temple.  This is a fairly busy tourist destination for people doing day tours outside Ho Chi Minh City, so there were lots of people around.  We stood in line for about 10 minutes and then right as I was about to enter the actual temple the ceremony started and several of the priests (in coloured robes) and their followers (in white robes) were hurrying in past me. With so many people trying to get a view of the ceremony it was very difficult to see. From what I could see and hear of the 30 minutes ceremony, it appeared that everyone was kneeling throughout the temple, chanting and praying.  We only stayed in the temple for about 10 minutes and then headed outside, found our shoes and then took a few photos of the outside area.

After our stop at the temple our tour headed to a local restaurant for some lunch.  As you will notice in almost all my posts, we eat a lot in Vietnam.  It seems like the food just never stops coming out.  I'm also working on my chopstick skills, which some days are better than others.  We had a great meal, met some of the other people on our tour and headed back on the road towards Cu Chi tunnels around 1:30pm.

It was about an hour ride to the tunnels.  The Cu Chi tunnels were the result of the Viet Cong (VC) presence in the the Cu Chi district during the Vietnam war.  The tunnels are about 2-3 meters under ground and as small as 80cm wide and 80cm high...yes they are extremely small.  Eventually the tunnels covered over 250km of territory in the Cu Chi district and families began to live in the the multi-level tunnel system...turning them into a sort of human mole.  The tunnels included vent shafts to disburse smoke and aromas from the underground ovens.  To camouflage their presence they were covered with thick grass and termite mounds, and sometimes pepper was sprinkled around the holes and the VC's would wash with the same soap as the US military to throw off a dog's scent.

We were given the opportunity to go into one of the tunnels and crawl about 40 meters to one of the exits.  Most people tried this out...a couple turned around after seeing how narrow the tunnels were...and I of course just sat and watched.  Not an activity this claustrophobic has an interest in doing!!  I am still amazed that people actually lived in tunnels like this, especially in war conditions.

From the tunnels we headed back to the city;  about 1.5 hour drive.  By this point I was feeling a bit exhausted...not yet over my jetlag and feeling a bit rundown with a cold, so decided to try and nap on the way home.  Just as I was getting to sleep, our bus came to a screeching halt and I heard gasps from people as we almost hit two older women on their motorbike. Everyone was OK, but it sure did create a bit of a stir.  Not long after our almost collision we came across hundreds of people flying kits in a local park area just outside the city.  It was an incredible sight seeing all these kits in the sky...looked a bit like huge dragonflies flying around.  How great to see families spending time together on a Sunday afternoon.

We arrived  back in HCMC at about 6:30pm, tired and ready for dinner.  We met up with the final two members of our team and headed out for our first team dinner of the trip.  So great to finally meet everyone and get to know one another.  We had a great dinner at a beautiful restaurant not far from our hotel and then headed back for an early night;  4:15am pick up time for our flight to Rach Gia tomorrow.

Until then...
Lisa