Ruins and stuff

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After a day of organising stuff – annoying but necessary I guess when you’re travelling for a while – we now have all of our flights, accommodation and excursions organised through til the middle of September. Which is pretty cool, means we can ignore that stuff again for another couple of weeks.

One of the little side trips that we had booked was out to My Son (“me sun”), a ruined holy city of the Cham people that lived in central Vietnam from the 2nd til 13th centuries, and a UNESCO world heritage site. The Lonely Planet (yes, that bastion of accuracy) considers it a smaller version of places such as Angkor Watt in Cambodia, amongst others.

It’s about 55km from Hoi An – manageable on a scooter if we’d felt like it, but it’s only a few bucks to jump on one of the tour buses that head out there. So we did. Thankfully there wasn’t much of a ‘tour’ involved – some brief history and a quick chat at the largest site, and then we were left to our own devices. I was very impressed to be honest, and despite the heat could have wandered round for ages through the various temples and rooms around the site. Although there is still plenty to see, a lot of the ruins are due to American bombing rather than age – the VC used My Son as a staging area during the war – which is a shame.

Still, one thing that is left are several large stone penises – really, is a trip to any world heritage area complete without them? – which always makes for some good comedy shots. We were at the site for a good couple of hours, after which we took the bus and then boat back to Hoi An. The boat ride back wasn’t much to write home about – a mediocre lunch and being dragged through a ‘working village’ (ie, a bunch of overpriced souvenir shops that I gave up on after the second one) – but still, for around $10 USD the trip was excellent value. Had a couple of hours beside the pool once we got back in the late afternoon, several bia hoi’s with dinner near the river, and that was the day done and dusted.