history religion and sliding in ho chi minh city

the all seeing eye of cao dai
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We took the night train from danang to saigon, but this time we had a soft sleeper which was much nicer., although there wre blood stains on one of the sheets they gave us! Thank god for silk sleeping bag liners. We shared our compartment with two finnish people who got off at 5am to go to the beach in mui ne. we arrived at the more civilised time of 9am and hopped in a taxi to our hotel. The taxi driver played the same trick as the one in hue – "accidentally" getting lost to bump up the fare. Unfortunately for him we are not stupid, can follow a route on a map and were wise to his tricks so we made him stop, gave him less than it said on the meter and walked back towards our hotel. We have ended up staying downtown amongst all the fancy hotals like the sheraton (all the ones we called near the backpacker disrict were either full or had trebled their prices) and so were expecting a dump for our $20. Turned out to be very nice with an excellent shower, a view of the saigon river and cable tv.

high or low ranking officials?
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We showered the train grime off us and headed out for something to eat. Unfortunately the first two restaurants we tried to visit had shut down so I got into my usual hot, humid asian city, aimless traipsing grump. I blame a lack of food. We ended up in the backpacker area where we had burgers and extortionate water at allez-boo bar. Not all that. Then the boy headed off to the war remnants museum and I wrote our blog, deleted it and wrote it again. The walk back to the hotel was enlivened by a thunder storm and much crazy scooter driving and road crossing. Boy said the museum was good – much better than the one in hanoi. For tea we went crazy and treated ourselves to sushi in little tokyo. We went to "the sushi bar", it seemed to be full of japanese ex-pats/ businessmen. Really enjoyed it – good to have something different and wasn’t much more expensive than the allez-boo bar. Then home to watch spiderman 3 on tv.

dancing cow on the roof of the holy see
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Next day we went on a tour to the cao dai holy see and the cu chi tunnels. We didn’t book through them, but ended up on a TNK travel tour. We had a very good guide called slim jim, he had a vietnamese name as well but not as memorable. He used be an english teacher in mekong delta so no language problems. It took about 2.5 hours to get to the cao dai place, of course this included the obligitory "rest" stop at a factory where you could buy pictures made of eggshell mosaics. All very impressive but not actually very nice and very pricey.

in a cu chi tunnel. specially enlarged for ginat westerners, but still pretty small.
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Cao dai is a religion invented in vietnam in the 1920s and has 2 million followers, compared with 8 million catholics and a lot of buddhists. It is a blend of buddhism, hinduism, islam and catholicism, although mostly buddhism I think. The holy see is their main place of worship and looks like a big pink disneyland inspired cathedral. It has a prancing cow on the roof. The symbol for the religion is the eye and there is a giant one above the door and lots more eyes inside and out. They look a lot like the eye of sauron on the front of my copy of the lord of the rings. But I am not a geek, honest. We were here to watch a service which wasn’t as weird as we though it would be as there is a high up balcony for tourists and you can come and go as you please. Most followres of cao dai wear white robes, but some wear yellow to represent buddhism, blue to represent hinduism or red to represent catholicism. There are nine steps for followers to sit on for the service you start at the back and move up a step every five years. but no-one can sit on the ninth step as that is for the pope and high ranking offiacials and there aren’t any of these. The popoe was chased off to cambodia in the 1950 (when cao dai had an army that opposed both the north and south vietnamese armies) and died there. I don’t what happened to the high ranking official, but there aren’t any. You also seem to get top wer different hats on different steps. Some of them looked like characters out of final fantasy tactics (again I would like to point out that I am not a geek, it is the boy’s game. I just play it on the psp on boring bus journmeys). This all makes the service a a little odd as there is no leader just a man banging a gong to tell eveyone when to prostrate themselves and some dischordant music and singing from the choir. All in all was glad we went (was only $2 exrra on top of the $5 cu chi tunnel tour). Next we were whisked away in our aircon bus to one of those strange restaurants that is empty all day and full of a hundred tourists at lunchtime where we had some uninspiring food and met a very nice yellow sausage dog.

After lunch we were off to see the cu chi tunnels. These were built by the vietcong during the french war for fighting and were used gain during the american war for hiding in. we watched a video which seemed a lot like commie propaganda. It told us how the people of cu chi just wanted to protect their idyllic rural way of life and so fought against the capitalist south. It also told us about some "american killer heros" and how many scalps they had claimed. The strange bit was that we were being shown round by a guide who had fought on the opposite side (for the south vietnamese army) and who was not happy the communist north had won the war but wasn’t allowed to say so for fear of reprisal. After the video we saw some animal traps that had bee adapted for jungle warfare, a captured american tank and then had a go in the tunnels ourselves. There is a special section that has been doubled in size to accommoadte our giant western frames, but it was still pretty small and lots of people had to make an early emergency exit from the 100m long tunnel. back to saigon on the bus with slim jim regaling us with more aussie slang he had learnt from a book a previous customer had sent him. Such gems as: being a-round like rissole and going to shake hand with the one eyed serpent. I told him about droppingthe kids of at the pool and downloading files, jam would be proud of me. We arrived in the middle of another thunderstorm – it is supposed to be the dry season, very dissapointing – so we sheltered in a veggie restaurant called zen where I had a fairly decent attempt at mexican food, although I had to had some spice to the enchiladas and for some reason there was apple in the guacamole. Alex had a good aubergine curry and much to his delight a first jackfruit milkshake.

We spent the next day at dam sem waterpark, saigon has three of these although i think one may have shut down so check before you go. We took a taxi (80,000 dong) - decadent I know but we couldn’t find a map of where it was. Turns out you can take a bus from ben thanh market bus station for 3000 dong – we came back this way. If you take a taxi make sure you get dropped at the waterpark gate as there is also a rubbish themepark that we ended up paying to get into as well. only an extra 45,000 each though and it did entitle us to see some mokeys and elephants in really small cages, a marching band practice and some kitsch models of dalmations and dinosaurs. The waterpark itself was excellent; lots of tube slides including some pitch black ones that scared the boy and twisty ones that made hime feel motion sick – pathetic. Also some fun ones where two of you sit a big figure of eight rubber ring and a wave pool with live cheesy pop on stage twice a day! Best was one where you wenr down a fast slide into a bowl that you go round and round in until you drop out the bottom of it. This one made the boy feel particularly queasy. Strangely we were made to go to a speacial foreigner sunbathing area with our own special lockers and restroom. I don’t if this was so we didn’t have to put up with screamiong school parties or so vietnamese people wouldn’t have to look at our scantily clad, giant western bodies! We headed back to the centre on the bus and looked at all the scooters cruising the streets (and pavements) possibly more than usual because it was new years eve. Lots of lights and glow sticks and loud music as well. We did the sensible thing and spent the rest of new years eve in the room eating rambutans and chocolate and watching a 30 Rock marathon on cable, although at least we managed to stay awake unlike last year! Next day we headed off to the mekong delta…….