Caodaism and Cu Chi Tunnels

Yesterday I traveled on a tour of Tay Ninh and Cu Chi. Tay Ninh is the headquarters for an unusual Vietnamese religion, Caodaism. Caodaism is the synthesis of three or four religions - Catholicism, Buddhism, and Confucius, and Taoism. Caodaism was started in the early 1930's and includes modern saints like Victor Hugo. It seems to a strange mix of religions whose principles were not clearly explained by our guide. At one time they even had an army of 25,000 to protect their religious freedom from the Vietnamese government. The main temple we visited where we witnessed one of the daily ceremonies looked like something out of a Walt Disney movie, with carvings of animated dragons and lion heads mixed with carvings of Buddha and Christ, with the all seeing eye of god at the center of the most of the relieves. The ceremony that we witnessed was similar to a Buddhist ceremony with chanting and meditation. What an unusual thing to see in the south of Vietnam.

After lunch at the temple we got back on the bus and headed towards the Cu Chi (pronounced Q chew) tunnels where the People's liberation communist party built an extensive tunnel network to travel and live unseen in the jungle right next to the American and south Vietnamese encampments. It was one of the main tools of North Vietnamese succuss during the war.

There were many tourists there with us from Europe but only two Americans including myself. We felt very out of place after watching an introductory video made in 1967 that highlighted the perseverance and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people in building extensive tunnel system (over 200km) and showed how peaceful and loving the people of Cu Chi were until the Americans came and began dropping bombs. The even showed a local girl receiving a medal of heroism for killing the most Americans. It was strange to take the paths through the jungle to the various tunnel entrances thinking that 40 years ago Americans were fighting and dying in the same area we were strolling through. They showed us many of the bunkers that were constructed and the system they had for cooking and dispersing the smoke through the ground to prevent detection. Then they showed us the various traps that were invented to injure and mame their opponents. Finally they encouraged us to fire some of the weapons used in the war like an M60 or AK47. It was horrible to imagine what both sides went through in fighting a war under those conditions.
There where areas set up like you typical tourist trap where you could pose with plastic replicas of soldiers, buy souvenir bullets and even for Vietnamese children to learn about tradition and
camp in the jungle. No matter where you fall on the debate about the Vietnam war it felt very awkward to be there. The whole experience was a good one, but a little overwhelming to think of the history and what my presence there meant after only 40 years have passed.

After what seemed like a full day on a crowded tourist bus and the overwhelming experience at the tunnels I thought I would get a massage. The Vietnamese blind institute is just down from my hotel and advertises that they give one hour massages for about 3 dollars. I thought this would be a way to help the blind and relax for the evening. The blind massage was an interesting experience and painful experience. The massuse seemed to easily find all of my knots would focus on them with all of the pressure he could exert. He also used alot of percussion techniques after everything was done I felt relaxed but also that I had be gently beaten for an hour.