About 90 km northwest of Saigon is the seat of the Cao Dai religion.

Cao Dai has about 8 million followers.  Only about 30,000 of them are outside of Vietnam.

This is their main cathedral, and we arrived just as the 10:00 AM service was getting underway.

Cao Dai started in Vietnam in 1926, when a government bureaucrat, Ngo Van Chieu, began sharing the revelations he had been receiving from God.

Cao Dai mixes freely from all the major traditions -- Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and Geniism.

Cool feature: one of the three most holy saints of the religion is Victor Hugo (the 19th century french novelist).  There are some 70 other saints, including Rene Descartes, Louis Pasteur, Leon Tolstoy and Chinese poet Li Bo.

Extra cool feature: the illuminati eye-with- triangle is one of their major symbols of deity.

"The Supreme Being informed Ngo that all the world's religions should return to the one from which they originally sprang. This message was to be delivered to the world. Ngo asked Cao Dai for permission to worship him under a tangible form. He then had a vision of the All-Seeing Eye and was subsequently ordered to use it as the symbol of Cao Dai. Ngo returned to Saigon in 1924 and taught the philosophy and esoteric practice he had learned from Cao Dai."

The priests file into the front door.

We had to scuttle past quickly, because once the service starts, no one may pass in front of the doors.

Cao Dai is interested in attracting members, so they are quite gracious about allowing the service to be a kind of tourist spectacle. 

While visitors are forbidden to pass before the front doors during the service, they ARE allowed to traipse the balconies and take as many pictures as they like.

Regular followers wear white.

Priests and higher-ups wear yellow, red and blue. Women are allowed office up to the rank of Cardinal (but not Senior Cardinal or Pope).

There are nine levels of approach to enlightenment.  Followers are "promoted" via seance ceremony.  But the Vietnamese government outlawed seances, so now nobody moves up any more.  The highest living rank is seven.  Levels eight and nine of the church are completely empty.

This is a decent shot of the illuminati eye-triangle.

Phu Quoc Island

Southwest of Ho Chi Minh City is a resort island called Phu Quoc.

By any rational estimation, the island sits firmly in the coastal waters of Cambodia, and ought not belong to Vietham.  Which is why the north part of the island is dominated by one of Vietnam's big army bases.  Massive firepower is nine tenths of the law.

We came out to the island with Heather and Kate (friends visiting from the US) to do some scuba diving.

Most of these photos are Heather's, since Matt got the flu and Sarah can't be bothered with the camera.

Heather and Kate on their spiffy rental bike.  Heather is driving.

The island is quite laid back. 

Or maybe it just seems that way because I spent so much of the trip in bed with the flu.

Getting ready to dive.

Our gear.

Fish farm.

Coming back to the port.  After this point, Matt barfed a lot and laid around in the hotel room for two days.  Sarah entertained the visitors.