May 21, 2026
Cao Dai’s Saint… Victor Hugo!
Chào, folks!
Here I am – back in Vietnam (I’m a poet – I just don’t know it). So – what am I here for, why, and why here of all places?
Actually, I’ve talked about the “why” plenty before. The thing is, when you manage to make a successful product/service/technology, an “ecosystem” of sales channels + services + end users inevitably forms around it, made up of resellers/distributors, and/or partners/customers/clients.
Naturally, that ecosystem needs to be supported! You need to come up with new products, improve services, warn everyone about what’s coming, and save and resuscitate those really struggling. And they come flooding into our ecosystem all by themselves! All in the name of fighting cyber-evil.
But should we improve, and make everything even better? Of course we should!
That’s why we develop our partner network all over the world – where we can; why we teach cybersecurity at all kinds of technical universities – where we’re welcome; and why we hold exhibitions and conferences in locations far and wide. In this vein, we’ve just wrapped things up in Ho Chi Minh City.
I should probably stick in a photo here – this one’ll do, I think:
And now, briefly, a few words about the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam:
Population = 100 million: 16th in the world.
Economy, by PPP = 25th in the world.
Per capita, the picture gets a bit sad… 102nd – between Algeria and Equatorial Guinea.
Right, that’s the business part covered; time now to move on to the touristy stuff. And there’s plenty of that here! First up: the Great Divine Temple – aka the Cao Dai Cathedral, or the Tay Ninh Holy See – the main temple and spiritual center of the syncretic religion of Caodaism. An utterly amazing structure!
The guides (and the internet) tell you all sorts of things about it – and it really does seem to have quite the backstory!
The Cao Dai religion was founded way back in 1926 – exactly a hundred years ago! Which means it’s very, very young. It was invented right here, and to this day exists only in southern Vietnam. And as to its name – quoting Wikipedia: “The full name of the religion is Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ (the Great Faith [for the] Third Universal Redemption“).
By the way, I should explain right away that this and the information that follows is compiled from what our guide told us – as far as I managed to remember it, plus various seemingly truthful materials from the internet.
So, Cao Dai is basically “take the best from different technologies and combine it into something even better”. And the result? Cao Dai is a combination of five (5!) different religious beliefs: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and ancestor worship. Now, I’m no theologian, so how you mix such different religious movements into one is beyond me. Taoism is “follow the path of the Tao”; Confucianism is self-cultivation and harmony among everyone; Buddhism is enlightenment and nirvana, or “whatever happens, happens”, so there’s no need to fret; Christianity – well, you know: God on Earth, the 10 Commandments, and a better world through suffering. How you weld such disparate religions together is totally unclear; all the same, as our guide confirmed: Cao Dai is extremely strict and severe.
There’s no indication of severity, however, in the temple – as it’s so sumptuous and just wonderful! Well, apart from the logistics. It’s about 90 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, and given the local traffic it takes up to three hours to get there. So pick a comfortable car or bus. For that’s how traffic works in Vietnam: whether you’re in a car or on a scooter, the flow always moves at an average speed of around 30km/h. And in the city, sometimes walking is faster. Here Google Maps says it’s almost two hours on the road, but this screenshot was taken around midnight Vietnam time.
The symbol of the Cao Dai religion is an image of the left eye. Why the left one, I can’t quite remember. It’s something about the strength of man, who’s supposed to be to the right side of woman – or something like that.
Hmm… here it looks like they’ve drawn a right eye – or am I seeing things wrong?
We arrived at the very end of one of the prayers, and tourists aren’t allowed inside during that time. But once the ceremony was over, we were allowed to have a wander around:
The temple was built starting in the 1930s, and – surprisingly – various sources, including our guide, say it was built with donations from local residents, and by the residents themselves – meaning without professional architects or builders.
There’s also a legend that only virgins took part in decorating the temple – precisely 500 of them. I’m not sure whether that’s true or just some legend, but either way the temple’s turned out absolutely stunning – both outside and in:
The altar:
One interesting feature: believers, not tourists, can only walk along one side of the temple depending on their gender – men on the right side, women on the left. And never the other way round. And in the middle of the temple, behind the altar, there’s a door in the floor to… the afterlife, which we were strongly advised not to enter – for now. Somewhere over there:
Lavish!
The dragons coiling around the columns are just beautiful!
A thought occurred to me: it’s like St. Basil’s Cathedral, Vietnamese-style!
Another interesting fact. During World War II, the French left Vietnam to the Japanese – the country had been a French colony before that – but before retreating, they planted a bomb in the temple, which for some unknown reason failed to explode. So the local believers quite reasonably consider the temple to be under the protection of higher powers.
The saints of the Cao Dai religion:
Alas, I got carried away photographing the interiors and missed the story about these guys…
But the most interesting thing is that one of the saints venerated by this religion is – you won’t believe it! – the French writer Victor Hugo! In 1926 he was recognized here as one of the “venerable saints” – holy spirits – of the Cao Dai religion!
There he is, second from the left:
It’s an unclear and rather strange story, but we believed our wonderful guide and the internet: they say the same thing.
An astonishing, sumptuous place – an absolute must for any tourist itinerary in southern Vietnam. Meanwhile, it was time for us to be off…
The best hi-res photos from Vietnam are here.
