Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple

Day 2 in Ho Chi Minh and we embarked on our first organised tour with the Sinh Cafe. We spent a day seeing the Cu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai temples. Price was about $8 each and included transport (3 hours from Ho Chi Minh) in a fairly new air conditioned van. There were only 5 of us, Bec, myself, a french couple and a french girl who lives in Argentina. We had some great discussions and all cringed together at some of the driving in Vietnam.

In the morning we headed out to the Cu Chi tunnels where we saw how the Viet Kong lived during the war, including how they lived, cooked, fought and made weapons. We climbed through some of the tunnels which were incredibly small. Not sure how they lived like this.... 

 Some random fruit at Cu Chi

This is a cashew tree... never knew they grew like this. The black bit on the bottom of the fruit it the cashew.

 Me getting in one of the tunnels. Tiny but has actually been widened for tourists.

 Booby trap....

 Bec checking out a tunnel

 Me with the Viet Kong dummies...

 Now Bec....

 Into the tunnels we go...

Quite small and dark...

Some of the bombs used in the Vietnam War.

After a morning at Cu Chi we headed to the Cao Dai Temple. This was almost on the Viet/Cambodian boarder, so we ended up quite a distance from Ho Chi Minh. The temple is for a religion that was founder in 1926 and its belief is that all religions are handed down from the King of Heaven (ie; God Buddha etc). They believe that when a certain group of people need help, a messenger of the King of Heaven is sent to create a religion to help those people. Very interesting and an amazing building as below;

 Lots of shoes...

 Massive temple...

 The story behind the religion...

 Very colourful inside.

 The yellow, blue, red, white and white with red sash identify between different religions... Red is christian... cant remember the other ones. It is a place where they can all worship together.

 Entrance to the temple 

 View from upstairs. The temple invites tourists as it survives totally on donations.

After our visit to the temple and a nice lunch we were running a bit early so our tour guide took us to a factory where they make egg shell and mother of pearl polished artworks. The amazing this about this place is the fact that it is all done by "handicapped" Vietnamese people. They showed us the process which can be painstakingly long. Some of the bigger pictures can take 8 months. Photos below are of the process but the end result is beautiful. Bec bought a nice polished mother of pearl design which featured horses... of course