Cham Rocks

Today, I visited My Son (pronounced “Mee Sun”). It is a temple complex of the Champa civilization, who settled here in the 4th century and began building with brick during the 7th century. The Chams practiced Hinduism, although there are some Buddhist influences from later centuries.

Some of the statues are missing their heads. According to the tour guide, the French who “discovered” My Son cut them off and brought them back to museums in France.
One of the mysteries is how they stuck the bricks together. You can see some modern mortar used during renovations, but notice the bulk of the bricks have no mortar. No one is sure how the Chams adhered the bricks to one another.

This guy has a weird sense of humor... like mine. (If you can’t tell from the picture, he is holding up signs so that “My Son” becomes “Did My Son do that?”) Classic!Here is our tour guide, but the interesting thing in the picture is the guy in the background...
Throughout the tour, we kept looking at each other thinking we knew one another, but could figure out from where. Then it hit me. Joe (from Korea) and I (along with two others) rode around in a tuk-tuk looking for a guesthouse for about an hour in Sukhothai, Thailand about two months ago. It was nice to see another familiar face. We had lunch together, toured around a little in Hoi An’s old city a little, and he joined my other friends and I for dinner and drinks.


Some of the sites from the old city... The Japanese bridge...

... and a merchant’s house with Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese influences…
… and one of the best examples of mother-of-pearl inlay I have seen…