Saigon - Cao Dai Temple Tour

On the moving bus, the tour guide made an announcement “Ok, now…we will continue…our journey…to…Cao Dai Temple…in one and half hour later…” (Later? Main petik je!) We laughed and acted like we were well understood on the funny part that we had to go through another back and waist pain on the bus (by the way, we were forced to do our “business” before we hopped back onto the bus. Nature’s calllllll!)

We stopped at one small café by the road side, that fulled with construction mud. The tour guide told us that we will have lunch here at this place, before we continue the journey to Cao Dai Temple. Hmm…definitely non-halal café la ni kan! The problem that we faced was all the foods served were non-halal. When I said non-halal, pork comes in the picture. But guess what, not even pork, you can find snake and frog in the menu! Haaaa even non-exotic restaurant pun bleh served snake meat tau!We just had our canned drinks and sat on the same table that eating porks. But lucky us, the Malaysian Chinese, Singaporean Chinese, pure Indian from India and a Korean, were well-understood of our religion. They even say “sorry” before eating. Get used to this situation, we asked them to go ahead and ignored us. Haha! We then started to chat about the comparison between Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam…even Thailand got into the picture. (Note that the Korean guy just remained silent and finished his pork soup. Haha…lost in translation.)

After one and half hour journey with scenic paddy fields on both sides of the road, we at last, saw the gate to Cao Dai Temple. There were temple, houses, schools, clinics, it was a town by itself I must said. We saw few people in white outfits and more walking forwards, when we approached the one and the only great divine big colorful temple.The bus was parked, and the tour guide has again, made an announcement “Now, we go inside, you can take their picture, with the temple, but you cannot take picture, with the temple…” (I hardly understand his Viet-English but I guessed, I got him). “Take as many picture, as you want, but never make noise…they will pray 4 times a day, and if you a believer, you have to pray, at least once a day…” “Ooooo…” I dropped my jaw.

He later explained that this religion is called Cao Dai and was introduced by a China-man who came to Vietnam. He started to improvise the belief and combined 3 kinds of faiths, that are Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism (perghhhh! Sukati je!)

Actually, the reason why hubby wore long pants was because, in the Internet, it was told that you can not wear short pants or sleeveless. Addressing the rule, I, myself did spare a long skirt in the bagpack. But approaching the main entrance of the temple, I saw almost all tourists (the whites) wore short pants and sleeveless. Come to think of it, yeah, how to enforce the rules to the whites, for that’s how they wear they life, kan?

Wasting no more time, we took off our shoes (stupid me, I took off my socks as well!) I stepped on the mosaic-steps, along with other tourists, and suddenly “Hey you…” (Huh? Who? Me?) “You…” (Shit! It’s me!) I looked at him. He wore white outfits with some kind of weird holy white hat, with serious-statement on his face. “Take off your turban.” (Huh? Did I forget that I was wearing turban this morning?) “This?” I pointed to my camo-U.S-army scarf. “Yes.” He pointed to the same thing. “Owh ok…” I took it off. (Setan!)

Inside, we were ushered to the first floor, where we can observed the ground floor that full of the believers, sitting on the floor, at the main entrance of the temple. Women and men, both genders wore white outfits (more or less look like “ao dai”, the national outfit). Only few had in blue, red and yellow (follow top ranks).From the upper corridor, waiting for them to perform the prayer at 12.30pm, all tourists looked around the temple, noiseless, like a ghost. The pillars were coated with colorful dragons, the ceiling was sketched with stars and clouds, the floor was decorated with checkered and circled mosaics, while the shocking part of the temple, the windows were crafted with one eye! The Eye! The Divine Eye that symbolized The God! ILLUMINATI! (The only person that appeared in my mind was Adib, who obviously annoyed with this secret-society.)“Panggggggggggggggg” “Oo mak hang!” English-man besides me giggled. Hehe! Why? Coz one of the red-wearing old man beat the huge holy bronze bell! Ye la, out of sudden, there was a loud sound that broke the silent, sape tak terkejut! It was the time to perform the prayer. The musicians started to take out their traditional musical instruments and play opera-notes, while a group of 8 young ladies in see-through white “ao dai” started to sing and hit high notes. Non-stop!An old couple in red and white outfit with hood on, walked slowly to the center of the temple, followed by several men in yellow, blue, and red outfit. They were identified as the high ranked people. The rest of the believers who in white outfit, will follow behind them, row by row in 2 separated sections. And last but not least, few men stood still next to the pillars, as well as behind the believers (must be the guard, I guess…orang lain sedap duduk, diorang berdiri, dah la tua…and we were informed that a session of prayer will last up to an hour!).Closed eyes, palm to palm, bow, we still heard the mantra. Standing at the corridor that full or tourists gave us the limitation to see what the thing that they worshiped was. But looking at The Eye, I bet, it’s The Eye that they praised for.

Bored with the same long no-action activity, hubby and I made a move out from the upper corridor. We walked through the aisle and moved to the musicians’ area. From there, I finally saw a very huge metal sphere depicting The Eye, right in front of those believers! Haaaaaa! Tu la dia! But why left eye? It was specifically chose the left eye because Yang is the left side and God is the master of Yang, and it is aligned with the heart. (Owh mannnn…sampai camtu skali ke?)Without waiting the session to come to an end (we were given 25minutes to watch all that), we walked back to the bus. Sigh…Illuminati, Illuminati…Perfectibilist konon!