On the evening of September 16, tens of thousands of Cao Dai followers from all over the provinces and cities flocked to the Tay Ninh Holy See ( Tay Ninh province) to prepare to participate in the 2024 Dieu Tri Palace Banquet. The Dieu Tri Palace Banquet is the biggest festival of the year for Cao Dai religion in Vietnam.
Inside the Bao An Tu building, there are 118 exhibition booths from all over the country. The booths are arranged in order from South to North.
A baby is carried on his father's shoulder to join the crowd admiring the exhibition booths.
The stalls are decorated splendidly and eye-catchingly. Each fruit tray is called a “trầm lộc” by the followers to show their sincerity and gratitude. After that, the chosen tray will be used as an offering to the Mother of Cao Dai Religion.
After the ceremony ends, the Church will judge and choose the most beautiful tray to offer in all participating booths.
Each exhibition booth represents a local religious institution. Many religious institutions invest quite a lot in their exhibition booths, with a value of up to hundreds of millions of dong.
A religious establishment decorates dragon and phoenix mascots with fruit.
Ms. Thuong (42 years old) is taking care of the flower gate at the exhibition booth of Binh Minh Commune (Tay Ninh province).
"Every year I attend the Yao Chi Palace Banquet. This is an opportunity for followers to pray for health and peace," said Ms. Thuong.
The booths were prepared many days in advance. After completing the decoration items, many followers chose to lie down right inside the exhibition area to wait for the day of offering the ceremony.
"This year's exhibition booths are quite elaborately invested in, and are larger in scale than previous years. Every year, when this holiday comes, the city is bustling and crowded," said Ms. Nhung (a local resident).
Although it was raining, the later it got, the more people flocked to Tay Ninh Holy See.
The Dieu Tri Palace Banquet Festival is not only a big festival for Cao Dai followers, but people and tourists from all over can also come to participate, immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the festival, and witness traditional rituals imbued with Tay Ninh culture.
Cao Dai followers arrived early, even a few days before. Many did not have the means to rent accommodation and had to sleep temporarily in the covered area inside the Holy See grounds.
People hang hammocks inside the towers in the grounds of the Vatican to sleep overnight.
People hang mosquito nets, hammocks, and spread out tarps to sleep overnight while waiting for the ceremony day.
Tay Ninh Holy See is considered the ancestral temple - the central worship facility of Cao Dai religion.
The Holy See is the largest religious structure of the Cao Dai religion, located in Hoa Thanh town, about 4km from Tay Ninh city. The Holy See campus is more than one square kilometer wide with large surrounding roads connecting the structures together.
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