Vietnam - Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple

I took a day trip from Saigon (or should I say Ho Chi Minh? I never know and people there call it both) to visit the Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Temple. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a series of underground tunnels that were used by the Viet Minh to fight against the French during the push for independence, and then were expanded and used by the Viet Cong to fight the US during the Vietnam war. There are a few series of tunnels farther north that were used as living quarters, but the ones I visited were used mostly for fighting. There were several layers of tiny little tunnels, and they were definitely built for people much smaller than I am.

There were some big entrances and went slowly into the ground, but there were also hidden entrances all over so that if they were being attacked they could flee quickly into the ground. They were very clever in all their planning, and thought of all the little things. For example, they used a kind of wood to make the doors to the entrances that would expand when wet. This sealed the entrances in rain and prevented the tunnels from being flooded.
They also obviously needed air holes, but having these directly in the ground would make the tunnels very obvious for enemy soldiers. So smartly they hide the air holes under fake ant hills like this one.
We were able to enter one of the tunnels and crawl for about 100meters. It was pretty claustrophobic and I barely fit. This is only the first layer of tunnels. They let us go down into the second but it would have involved crawling on my belly through the dark and I chickened out. The first one was enough for me.
You could also pay to shoot an AK47, which pretty much just freaked me out.
They also showed us all sorts of morbid traps used by the Viet Cong. This was one example, where it looked like grass but when you stepped on it it would rotate you and flip you down to the metal spikes below.

The same day I also went to see the nearby Cao Dai temple. Cao Dai is a religion founded in 1926 in Vietnam and it brings together a mix of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Catholicism (they even have a pope!). It's a pretty small religion and this colorful temple is the world headquarters and we were able to watch part of a prayer service.