Travelogue :  Kyvan's Southeast Asia Adventure

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Dec 9, 2005
Tunnels and Temples
 

We settled back in Saigon after being gone for so long in smaller quiet cities. And we understood that Saigon is like the New York City of Vietnam: shopping malls, neon billboards, entertainment...it's a busy, bustling city. We stayed in the Cho Ben Thanh area again because the hotels around there are so cheap, away from the backpacker district, and near the center of major things to do in Saigon. I wanted to do a quick day tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai temple. Mom and sis stayed behind because: 1) they didn't care for Communist patriotism and 2) they don't care about Cao Dai.

Cu Chi Tunnels

It's still my opinion that Americans should have never been in Vietnam. It gave the Vietnamese the perfect argument that the country was "liberated" from foreign invaders, as the Americans retreated. This therefore, enabled HCM to be considered a God to be worshipped as he appears on all bills of currency, billboard shrines, and as the body at the center of attention in Ha Noi. Cu Chi tunnels represent the clever methods in which the Viet Cong (VC), with their primitive weaponry, used immensely clever strategy to defeat Americans. Displayed were horribly painful, piercing booby traps that swing there way into soldiers' flesh and bone, an extensive underground tunnel system concealing VC guerillas, a compartment system that helps to slowly dissipate underground smoke, fake termite mounds to conceal these underground smoke vents, the use of scents, pepper and the uniforms of dead American soldiers, to misdirect canines. The tunnels present a very claustrophobic way of living, but this is what they needed to do to survive.

This trip provided a perspective we don't get from American history books. There was a blatant anti-American documentary shown that told of American invaders killing women and children civilians. Not only that, but they killed chickens, cows, dogs, and even gunned down Buddha sculptures. Imagine foreigners coming into your land and destroying your livlihood and families, torching your homes, desecrating images of your religion and disrespecting your tenets, and wasting your food. In our history books, we do not study that the VC are also people, a part of humanity, who also strive to survive. Now this may be a simplistic statement, because their struggle for survival also interfered with the lives of anti-communist Vietnamese in the most harmful ways (forced entry into homes, money stolen, girls raped, etc.) And it would be appropriate to say that American intervention led to so much harm and destruction, and yet I cannot fully disagree because I would not have the opportunities I have now if they were not present. I would not achieve any upward mobility like be able to own a home or get a well paying job, even with an education, because some members of my family were in the South Vietnamese army which sided with Americans. In turn, my children would also suffer this same oppression. Here is a government that truly seeps into the fabric of people's lives directly affecting them through many generations.

Cao Dai Temple

The Tay Ninh province has the highest number of Cao Dai Vietnamese. Cao Dai is a religion, a small sector of the dominantly Buddhist Vietnamese society. This religion combines Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. But interestingly, they also display images of Hinduism, Christianity (Jesus), and oddly enough, Victor Hugo plays a role in their beliefs. What is most noteworthy is the interior design of their main temple. It's colorful in a very childlike way: pink, baby blues, primary red, blue, yellow, and a sky ceiling painted with clouds. I really liked their window carvings of the triangular eye surrounded by lotus leaves and blossoms.