The Technicolor Ghost: Finding the Divine Eye in the Middle of Nowhere

I had absolutely no idea where I was going.

It was April 2018, and I was fresh off the boat (or rather, the plane). I had just been hired by an agency and "dispatched" to a teaching post in Xuân Lộc District, Dong Nai. I didn't know where that was. I didn't know what I would find there. I just held a ticket in my hand, boarded a bus in Saigon, and set off into my dubious future.

The journey was a blur of concrete dissolving into green, the chaotic hum of the city fading into the open road. And then, abruptly, the bus stopped.

I was dumped at a roadside motorbike repair shop and told to wait.

"Wait for what?" I wondered. Another bus? A person? A sign?

The shop was dusty and hot. A local man, perhaps sensing my total displacement, handed me a glass of cà phê đá (iced coffee). He didn't say a word. He didn't ask where I was from. He just sat there, sipping his own drink, staring at me for a good long while. It wasn't aggressive; it was just that profound, unblinking curiosity that every expat in Vietnam eventually gets used to.

I sat there, sweating in the heat, nursing the strong, sweet coffee, and looked across the road.

That’s when I saw it.

A Cathedral of Color

Rising out of the roadside dust was a structure that defied all my previous architectural logic.

I had traveled through Thailand and Cambodia. I had seen the shimmering golden wats and the ancient, stone-faced towers of Angkor. But this was different. This was aggressive, joyful, technicolor chaos.

It looked like a French cathedral had collided with a Chinese pagoda and a mosque. It was painted in vibrant shades of yellow, sky blue, and red. Dragons wrapped around pillars. And staring back at me from the façade was a giant, radiant Eye.

I was totally fascinated. It felt like a hallucination brought on by the heat and the caffeine.

I snapped a photo—capturing the temple through the tangled web of power lines that draped over the street like vines. It wasn't pristine, but it was real.

Eventually, a smaller, even more cramped bus arrived. I climbed on, leaving the repair shop, the staring man, and the technicolor temple behind. To this day, I don't know exactly where that temple is. It remains a mystery location—a "Technicolor Ghost" that appeared just long enough to welcome me to my new life.

The Giant I Never Met (The Tây Ninh Interlude)

It wasn't until my tenure in Dong Nai ended and I was shipped off to yet another unknown location—this time Tây Ninh—that I saw it again.

But this time, it was totally different.

My new English center was about 4km outside the city center. On my first day off, I decided to be productive. I hopped on the little green city bus, aiming for the local market to stock up on fresh fruit and supplies. I wasn't looking for culture; I was looking for dragon fruit.

As the bus rattled down the road, I happened to glance out the window and literally did a double-take.

There, dominating the horizon, was the Cao Dai Holy See.

If the temple in Dong Nai was the baby, this was the Mother. It was spectacular—a massive, sprawling complex that looked like the Vatican had been redesigned by a dreamweaver. It towered over the flat landscape, vibrant and imposing.

I stared at it as we drove past, mesmerized. But as the bus continued toward the market, the Holy See drifted into the distance.

"I'll go back next week," I told myself.

I never did.

To be honest, I found Tây Ninh city a bit underwhelming. It didn't grab me. And when you are working full-time, sometimes the effort to backtrack 4km for a sightseeing trip just doesn't happen. I bought my fruit, went home, and eventually moved on from Tây Ninh without ever stepping foot inside the most famous temple in the country.

The Neighbor on Nguyen Chi Thanh

Years passed. The "agency gods" spun the wheel again, and I eventually landed in Sóc Trăng, deep in the Mekong Delta.

Here, life found a rhythm. I wasn't just passing through anymore; I was living. And one day, while exploring my new neighborhood on Nguyễn Chí Thanh street, I looked up and saw an old friend.

It wasn't a ghost in the dust like Dong Nai. It wasn't a distant giant like Tây Ninh. It was a modest, beautiful Cao Dai Temple, sandwiched comfortably between the coffee shops and houses of my daily commute.

Living with the Divine Eye

I finally parked my bike and walked in.

The Sóc Trăng temple captures everything that fascinated me on that first day in 2018. The bright yellow (representing Buddhism), the deep blue (Taoism), and the red (Christianity/Confucianism) are all there. The "Divine Eye" still stares down from the façade, representing the universal truth that watches over all of us.

But here, it feels personal. There are no tour buses. There are no crowds. It’s just a quiet sanctuary where the locals go to pray.

It took me three cities and several years to realize that I didn't need to visit the Vatican of Cao Dai to understand it. I just needed to stop moving long enough to appreciate the one right down the street.

The temple in Dong Nai was the spark. The Holy See in Tây Ninh was the spectacle. But the temple in Sóc Trăng? That’s the neighbor. And sometimes, that’s the most important connection of all.

Cao Dai Temple. Dong Nai Province, Vietnam

Cao Dai Temple. Soc Trang City, Vietnam