Hoi An - My Son

Today something completely different. We were up early and out on a morning trip to a Hindu temple site called My Son, about an hours drive from Hoi An.

It's set in a beautiful lush valley and originally had over 68 temples until the Americans bombed it to pieces. All are now in ruins,but what glorious ruins. Built between the 4th and 13th centuries by the Cham people. There has been steady archeological work there for many years and the have rebuilt one of the temples completely using the traditional built materials and technicals used to create it. Although great to see how it originally looked, the ruined ones were magic.

I don't want to volunteer on this site seeing the spiders webs, the hole was about two inches across, so I wonder what size the spiders were. Eeeee

The places speaks for itself.

It was blisteringly hot when we got there, but somehow when we were wandering around the ruins, it seemed cooler. There were loads of other tourists, but you wouldn't believe it by the pictures.

So two hours and two bottles of water later we climbed back into our lovely cool taxi and headed back to Hoi An exhausted. What a lovely place.

There was obviously summit going on when we got back. We watched over the balcony as people lined the water as boats paddled around. It was a boat race scheduled to start at 2pm. That is Vietnamese time and it actually started at 3pm by which time we had wandered down to watch.  Well all I can say is that I am amazed there wasn't a few heart attacks.

The race was between the bridges, not once, not twice but eight times at full speed in eighty degrees. We felt exhausted just watching them.

Another evening of wandering around the Old town,  people watching and taking in the street scenes.

Family out for the festivities