Cao Đài Temple

The temple campus is a really huge and open place. The temple itself is quite large and has a great deal of fine detail work. Rather than replicate everything said in the Wikipedia article I'll add my own impressions and some additional detail picked up from the tour guide.

Between our tour guide, Wikipedia and the CIA World fact book there is quite a discrepancy regarding percentage of various religions practiced here. According to the guide about 60% of the population is Buddhist, 15% Christian, 5% Muslim, 5%  Cao Đài and the remainder other religions or not religious. From Wikipedia the figures are 80%, 8%, "a small minority" and 3% respectively. And finally the CIA World Factbook says the distribution is 9.3%, 7.2%, 0.1% and 1.1% respectively.

While approaching the temple our tour guide said that photos are allowed and can be taken throughout the campus, the temple and during the ceremony which would start at noon. One significant protocol he made us aware of is that once the ceremony begins it is not allowed to walk past the front of the temple. I snapped a number of photos outside and inside the temple then headed outside once tourists began to fill in the gallery and the Caodaists began assembling on the ground floor to begin the ceremony.

Outside, while putting my sandals back on (shod feet are not allowed in the temple), a Caodaist approached me and struck up a conversation asking where I am from, why here, how long am I staying and what religion do I practice. He was an older man I would estimate to be in his late sixties. Quite pleasant and easy to speak with. Once he found that I wasn't going to watch the ceremony he invited me back into the temple saying it is a very beautiful sight to see accompanied by pleasant music and singing. With an invitation like that how could I refuse? So back in I went. The video attached here shows the beginning of the ceremony. I should have started recording earlier. The missing piece is that women are on the left and men on the right. When the ceremony began they were lined up facing each other on opposite sides of the temple and then moved to the center, keeping their ranks separate, until there was a small gap between the two groups as seen in the video. At that point they all turned to face the far end of the temple and sat to pray. I exited shortly after the end of the video, before the end of the ceremony, to get on xe buýt before it left.

One of the significant contrasts I noted is how clean and well kept the campus and temple are vice the filth and dirt right outside the gate. Outside the gate there was trash piled in the street and laying against the campus fence. And it stank.

So there is a beautiful, large, well kept temple on a big campus ringed by a wall...

...and outside is a stinking mess. Despite the rotting mess, I didn't see any flying bugs of any kind. I expected a swarm of flies based on experience from home. There were NO bugs flying around the garbage or pestering me for standing too close to it.