We booked a day trip out of Ho Chi Minh City today, to go to the Cao
Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. It cost us only 6 US dollars each.
We
set off at 8 a.m. A bus picked us up at our guesthouse after breakfast,
which was provided free at the guesthouse. The bus was a big coach, and
picked up other tourists at other guesthouses along the way out of the
city. In total there were about 20 people on our bus, many Germans and
French, a small group of Hong Kongers and two Japanese men who didn't
speak any English at all and so didn't understand anything.
It
was a long drive from Ho Chi Minh City to Tay Ninh, where the biggest
Cao Dai Temple, which is also its Holy See, is. We slept most of the
way. We reached the temple just before noon, just in time to watch the
noon prayers.
Ours wasn't the only bus that had come to watch the ritual, of
course. There were hundreds of tourists converging on the temple. It
must be quite an annoyance, having to pray everyday with tourists
snapping photos of you. But then, only the noon prayer is open to
public viewing. Who knows what they do once all the tourist buses
leave...
It was a gorgeous temple, very colourful and so
different from all the other temples I've seen in Vietnam and the rest
of Southeast Asia. We had to take our shoes off at the
entrance, then we were all herded to the second floor of the temple,
from which we looked down at the prayer hall.
A live band played and a choir of
women sang throughout the prayer. The worshippers stood in neat
formation and performed their prayers in unison, sitting down, standing
up and bowing down as one.
After the prayers were over, we returned to our bus and headed for
lunch, at a spot I don't know where. Lunch was simple but nice. I had a
sour fish soup with rice, Lianyi and June had chicken. The most
exciting thing that happened was one of the Japanese men sat on a chair
that broke and he fell over with a loud bang. This was just after he
had asked the three of us if we were Thai. Not that there was a connection between the two events.
Then,
it was another hour-long ride to Cu Chi, a suburban district of Ho Chi
Minh City that served as headquarters for the National Front for the
Liberation of South Vietnam, also (disparagingly) known as the Viet
Cong.
This was
the main highlight of going to Ho Chi Minh City for me, so I was plenty
excited. The part of the Cu Chi tunnels that is open to tourists is one
section of what I can best describe as a park, a large wooded area
that's been gated and turned into a tourist destination.
First
we were put into a darkened room and made to watch a propaganda video
which I barely understood because the video was very old and the sound
quality was poor. I even fell asleep. But it was basically talking
about how Cu Chi used to be a village of peaceful farmers and
schoolkids, but when the US attacked, they all turned into national
heroes. The video highlighted a particular schoolgirl who was about 15
who killed many American soldiers and was given a medal for it.
After that we were taken on a tour of the park. There was an American
tank that had been left behind from the war, a large crater created by
a bomb, several wax figurines depicting the lives of Communist soldiers
during the war -- a man writing a letter to his beloved, a woman
combing her hair and prettying herself so that, according to our guide,
she could flirt with the men.
Our
guide, whose name was Hai, was a middle-aged man who had fought during
the war, on the American side. He had two missing fingers on his left
hand and a wicked deadpan sense of humour that reminded us of the
Russian's father. He said, "Some of these women, they flirt with the
men, and then afterwards it becomes more than flirting and then she
become no longer virgin, because they don't know about... the banana.
My English is not good, I don't know how to say it, but you know what I
mean. And then nine months later there is a baby. There were many
babies born in the tunnels."
In fact the woman who manned the souvenir stall in the park was born in the tunnels, he said.
We
also looked at an exhibition of the different types of booby traps that
the Communists made during the war. Traps to tear the flesh of your
leg, traps to spike your gonads when you burst open a door, traps to
make you fall face first onto a bed of rusty nails. There was another
installation, complete with electric wax figurines that could move and
show how the Communists made their weapons underground.
And then,
we were brought to a closet filled with five different types of
guns/rifles. An AK-47, an M60, I can't remember what else. For 1 US
dollar a bullet, you could fire a round of shots at the shooting range.
A lot of the people in our group lined up for it, but the three of us
sat out.
It was so fucking loud and only the shooters were given earmuffs
(and even they could barely stand the noise, we found out later). My
body jerked involuntarily at every shot. This was something I only
discovered then, at Cu Chi, that I can't control my body jumping
whenever there's a loud noise, even when I'm expecting and waiting
for it. I am such a loser. So I basically sat there with my fingers in
my ears waiting for it to stop, and learning once and for all that I was not
cut out to be a revolutionary.
Finally, finally, after the shooting was over, it was time to
crawl into the tunnel. Or at least, 100 metres of it. We first went 2
metres underground, then 6, then 8. The tunnel was very dark the whole
way, and at some points completely pitch black. It was so narrow we had
to walk while squatting. And note -- this was the part of the tunnel
that had been enlarged to twice its original size so that we fat tourists
could waddle through it! I cannot even imagine how people had sex in
the original tunnel, much less give birth or heal the wounded. But it
was so much fun. We were giggling throughout because it was such an
impossible thing we were doing. On top of the duck-walking, there were
parts where you had to pull yourself up, parts where you had to jump into the darkness
and trust that the ground wasn't too far away. I would have done it
again if I could. We were exhausted at the end of it, and for the next
2 days, I couldn't walk properly because my thighs hurt so much. But it
was totally worth it.
At the end of the tunnel crawl, we were given a nice Communist guerilla
treat -- boiled tapioca and peanut sugar. And then it was time to go
home. It was another 3-hour drive back to Ho Chi Minh's city centre. We
took a shower back at the guesthouse then set out again for dinner.
Dinner was a lovely French meal at the French Cultural Centre. Lianyi had this amazing tuna steak, we'd never had anything like it
before. And then we had some really good desserts -- chocolate mousse,
profiteroles, apple crumble with ice cream.
After
dinner June left us to take a train to Hue, while Lianyi and I
went for drinks at the Rex Hotel -- because Lonely Planet told us to, of course.
The rooftop bar at the hotel gave us a nice view
of Ho Chi Minh City. We could see slummy apartments standing right next to
swanky hotels. We could look into people's homes, watch them walking around their TV sets. We saw a lot of old buildings taking
their time to rot, but also a city rapidly taking on change and
progress. And then our attention was caught by a group of motorcyclists zooming through the
streets waving giant Vietnamese flags and cheering at the top of their
lungs.
We found out later that the jubilance was due to Vietnam beating Laos at soccer in the
SEA Games that night, but the passion of their ecstasy puzzled us. No offence Xai and the people of Laos, but... doesn't everyone expect to win against Laos?
The
rooftop of the Rex Hotel was also a nice vantage point from which to
say goodbye to Ho Chi Minh City. We were going to Hanoi the next
morning. We went back to the guesthouse exhausted and hungry for sleep.
But at 5 a.m. our neighbour could be heard yelling at her child and
beating it again, and the child could be heard wailing in response
