Day Trips

The Great Cao Dai Temple, Tay Ninh, Vietnam

T. L. Watts

The Great Cao Dai Temple: Tay Ninh, Vietnam

A trip out to see the Great Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh is a great day trip to escape some of the hustle and bustle of Saigon. The drive is amazing, albeit somewhat bumpy; the roads are in some need of improvement, but hopefully this will improve if the TransAsia highway is ever constructed. Regarding the Cao Dai religion, it is something of a novelty; it was founded by Ngo Minh Chieu, a French civil servant in the 1920s. He asserted that he began receiving "revelations" in 1919 regarding the disunity of other religions and that he should be responsible for bringing about a synthesis. Thus, he was to combine the teachings of various beliefs, including Buddhism, Taiosm, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and others. He revealed his practices to the public in 1926 and the Cao Dai religion was born. Perhaps one reason it became so popular was that it became involved in the Vietnamese nationalist movement that sought to expel the French. Cao Dai fighters eventually joined the French afainst the Viet Minh, however, but suffered persecution after the takeover by North Vietnam. The great temple functions as the center of the religion, much like St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. There are numerous other Cao Dai temples in Vietnam, as the religion is particularly popular among people in the South. The temple was constructed between 1933 and 1955, and is located about 60 miles northwest of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) near the small town of Long Than in the Tay Ninh province. The ceremonies are held four times a day; the most popular for visitors is the noon ceremony. Visitors are restricted to the visitor's gallery, seen as the catwalk above the main floor in the photo.