OnTheRoad

While I'm almost templed out (I may have mentioned this before) I did head out to see the head Cao Dai temple yesterday. Cao Dai is apparently a blend of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Catholic Christianity and something called the Third Alliance of God and Man. I don't know the whole thing, but it's certainly a different style of place than most I've seen. You can check out the photos here, I may have gone overboard.

While out that way, I also visited the Cu Chi tunnels, or a recreation thereof. It's in the same district, but they've widened and reinforced the tunnels so that us oversize foreigners can actually get inside the damn things. The originals only had to admit half-starved VC soldiers and measured 50cm by 70cm.

Saigon itself doesn't have a hell of a lot to do. Apparently there are a lot of temples, but see the first line of this rant for my thoughts on that right now. So on that note, I'm planning on heading north tomorrow, up to a place called Dalat (possibly Da Lat - the Vietnamese tend to split these things into one syllable units, and transliterations sometimes agree and sometimes don't). At 1500m altitude I'm hoping for cool temperatures and great scenery. There's biking, hiking, kayaking and whatnot available so I may stay there a while :)

Also, I've started using Picasa to update my photos rather than Gimp. For most fixes, it's quick and simple, which I like. I also get cash when people install it using the link at the bottom of this page :D So if you do any digital photography but are too lazy to use the complex but powerful Gimp or Photoshop, check it out using the link down below.