Cao Dai Temple Ho Chi Minh City

they had the brains!!

This morning we woke up very bleary eyed! It was 6:30am. Today we were going on a trip to Chu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai temple. The bus picked us up at 7:45am and drove for 2 hours to a factory where we saw them making art work. They used bamboo as a base for the art. Then they very finely cut mother of pearl and …

Well the madness has begun. Adam had his first true test of driving his new ride this week and passed with flying colours. Although there are many accidents here and the traffic seems out of control, the sea of scooters, bikes, and the occasional car (we even saw a hybrid truck today!) seems to work well the majority of the time. Adam became just …

We arrived back from our tropical paradise with a bump into the metropolis that is Ho Chi Minh City: home of seven million motorbikes. That afternoon we revisited our favourite cafe Sozo (the one where eating a muffin helps local people) before a bit of retail therapy is followed by another look around the affecting war museum (our first visit saw …

A sabiendas de la puntualidad de las horas de llegada de los buses en Vietnam, tomamos el más temprano desde Mui Ne hacia Ho Chi Minh o ex Saigón, pues no sabíamos con que caos de ciudad nos encontraríamos al llegar allí ni cuanto demoraríamos en encontrar el hostel que habíamos reservado junto a nuestros compañeros ingleses.

Gran sorpresa …

So it was another full on day ahead of us.
Out tour guide Taoh is quite a funny guy who makes jokes as we head out of Saigon city, its a van we are in this time and I get the pleasure of sitting next to the Canadian/Vietnamese lady who falls asleep with her mouth open and keeps leaning on me :S
First we stop at the Handicapped Craft Village …

Sorry for the late posts, the wifi and internet at the hostel are unreliable.

yesterday
morning, went to binh tay market in cholon, and saw what a real market should look like rather than ben thanh market made for tourists.
Binh tay is much larger than ben thanh, and sells a lot more products, ranging from dried ruits and grain, to …

short riew for cu chi and cao dai, because my view is that both are tourist spots.

Cao dai
grand temple, with many statures and paintings on thee walls, but very tourist oriented now, especially with so many tourists arriving at mass.
While i thought the idea of an amalgam of religions and influences was interesting, the …

My Son


We set off at 8am to get to the My Son ruins about an hour away. All hopes of getting a sneaky extra hour of sleep were dashed as soon as the tour guide got up to introduce himself and did not stop talking the whole way. I didn't mind this after a while as it became apparent that this man was hilarious and was a star in the …

Hi there

We were up early this morning, in an attempt to beat the immense traffic jams that occur in Ho Chi Minh City.

We started our day with a drive to Cu Chi Tunnel. This Cu Chi underground relic is located about 70km from Ho Chi Minh City, in the North-West. A visit here, helps to understand the long hardships endured by the …

Ho Chi Minh City ……………R 30;……………& #8230;…..It's Sunday 5^th March, we arrived Wednesday 29^th Feb, the city is hot and humid and we have never seen so many scooters, mopeds and motorbikes, crossing the road is an experience!!! However you do get used to it and …

We are now getting used to the Vietnamese minibuses which rudely drop us off at the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) but I still feel apprehensive knowing that we will have to continue our journey balancing precariously on the back of a motorcycle ...

We arrived back from our tropical paradise with a bump into the metropolis that is Ho Chi Minh City: home of seven million motorbikes. That afternoon we revisited our favourite cafe Sozo (the one where eating a muffin helps local people) before a bit of ...

... it's our 5th night in Vietnam and we haven't ventured on yet! We've visited the Fine Arts Museum, Museum of Ho Chi Minh City, the Reunification Palace, War Remnants Museum and sampled some pho (Vietnamese noodle soup - yum). The Reunification Palace was ...

... So here are our adventures from Ho Chi Minh City and we will update with tales of Can Tho soon. First things first, Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is not for the faint hearted! It made Phnom Penh look positively laid back! The traffic was ...

We took a tour from HCMC to the Cao Dai Temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels.  Both were quite interesting sights. Cao Daiism is a religion.  It was established in Tay Ninh, near HCMC, in 1926.  Its first disciples claimed to have received ...

... together,and even managed to go for $30 each instead of $32, all leaving on the 10th. Neil decided to do the Cao Dai Temple/Cu Chi Tunnels tour tomorrow.  So I'm quite pleased with the dorm move because I've made some travel buddies for the next few ...

... . All while our bus trundles through the crowded streets of the cities third name - motorbike city (the other 2 names being Ho Chi Minh City and Saigon if you're a southerner.)   11:04 Our first stop was actually another handicapped handicrafts ...

... taken: of a naked little girl (Phan Thi Kim Phuc) running away from a napalm attack.  So our first stop was the Cao Dai temple. Unfortunately we had a really sweet old guide who spoke English that we couldn't understand/had to fill in lots of gaps to ...

... you have to do to understand it all. The other part of this tour I went on today (for US$5 :-) ) was a drive to a huge Cao Dai temple near the Cambodian border. Fuck. This is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. Cao Dai is the 'perfect ...

... given two options for this tour, a half day where they take you straight to the tunnels, or a full day which includes visiting a Cao Dai temple.  We decided to go on the full day as it was only a couple of dollars more and we thought we might as ...