Seeing is Believing?

The Cao Dai Holy See in the Tay Ninh district, about a hundred kilometres from Saigon, is an odd little shrine. There's little else to see in Tay Ninh, which means that the three-hour journey to the area is to be made solely to see the See. This is a deterrent, considering just how much there is to do in and around Saigon. But two things caught our interest when we perused the Eyewitness Guide's chapter on the Cao Dai Holy See - firstly, the religion communicates with holy spirits through seances; and secondly, Victor Hugo was one of the key proponents of the religion. Excited by these two facts, we decided to make the trip.

Cao Daiism proclaims itself 'the Great Religion of the Third Period of Revelation and Salvation' (I'm not kidding - that's what the name loosely translates to in Vietnamese). The religion is supposed to have begun with a covenant between man and god via the ever-reliable communication channel of the seance. The religion is also said to be a combination of the most salient features of all the major religions of the world. Our guide, a lovely man whose only flaw was a tendency to interrupt himself every three minutes to ask, 'Anyone wanna go toilet?', listed out the features of Cao Daiism drawn from other religions and also tried to convince us that most Hollywood stars are secretly followers of Cao Daiism. Incidentally, the Cao Daiists' pantheon of saints includes Pericles, Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc, all of whom, it would seem, were visited by the Cao Dai holy spirits.

Amidst conversation regarding restroom breaks and the secret fetishes of Hollywood at large, we were told several times over that the temple was an architectural masterpiece and that we would never see a structure as gorgeously constructed ever again. Let me tell you, it was not a masterpiece. It was a giant rectangular hall, not unlike the wedding halls that we see in India, with lots of colourful walls. Really.

As soon as we entered the Cao Dai Holy See, the first thing we saw was a giant painting of Sun-Yat-Sen, Victor Hugo and Nguyen Binh Khiem signing the covenant with god. And although I had no idea who the third guy was, I was excited.

After that, the place only got curiouser and curiouser. Moving past bright pink candy-striped pillars with green snakes coiled around them in a manner that was neither threatening nor aesthetically pleasing, we were told to climb up the stairs, into a gallery from where, in the most oddly voyeuristic gesture, we were allowed to take photographs of the monks praying below. Several members of the group of which we were a part determinedly stood among the monks and subjected them to a barrage of flashes and awkward portraiture with their cameras. The monks, true to their monkhood, paid absolutely no attention to them whatsoever.

The service was... colourful. Not to be outdone by the candy-striped pillars, the monks themselves were hierarchically colour-coded and seated on brightly-painted mosaic flooring. They screamed out verses and chants in an emotion that could only have been pure agony. We watched the proceedings with a mixture of fascination and uncertainty, for it was unlike anything we had seen before. Sadly, we were not allowed to see the actual 'See', which is a giant, omnipotent eye that sees everything.

After the service, we were herded out of the gallery and back into the main hall, where the monks continued to holler arbitrarily. After a few more nicely-timed photo-ops, we left the temple.

'Anyone wanna go toilet?' our guide asked us amiably as we climbed into our bus. And we smiled, gearing up for the three-hour journey back to Saigon.