My Son (approximately pronounced ‘mee serrn’) lies outside the small, picturesque (and unsurprisingly touristy) town of Hoi An, our current base. We left early this morning for the site, an hour away, to try and beat the crowds. Our driver dropped us off in an empty car park and told us to be back in two hours. An electric buggy whisked us from the ticket office to the entrance in a few minutes and then we walked another few hundred metres to the first group of buildngs.
The ruins, dating from the 4th to the 13th century, are remnants of the burial site of successions of Cham kings – they ruled over most of southern and central Vietnam, first as Hindus worshipping Shiva (the god of the temples at My Son), and later as Buddhists.
At one time, there would have been about seventy buildings at My Son, some of wood and some of brick. The site was discovered and excavated by French archaeologists in the nineteenth century.
However, the Viet Cong based themselves here in the 1960s and the Americans bombed the place (with B52s) to bits, leaving only some of the brick buildings standing. Apparently, the masonry skills were so good that it explains why there are still some buildings in evidence – the bricks are held together with a resin, mixed with ground brick and mollusc shells, so that there are only hairline cracks between courses.
A lot of the site has not been excavated because there is a lot of unexploded ordinance about the place so we kept to the paths!
Some of the buildings are wonderfully unrestored:
Others show indications of restoration – with signs showing the involvement of the Archaeological Survey of India everywhere:
Looking closely, there are moving Hindu images familiar to anyone who’s travelled in India and/or been to Siem Reap:
There were hardly any tourists at the start of our visit, which was wonderful. We noticed a group walking who turned out to be dancers, there to give a performance later on:
When we had nearly completed the visit and were completely drenched with sweat – no rain but intense humidity from all the greenery and water – we decided to leave and just in time! The queue for the electric buggies was enormous (and yes, Sue is looking smug):
As for that empty car park: there were now at least fifty coaches:
We were so lucky to see this marvellous set of ruins on our own!
How lucky you were to see it in the most natural way possible. This is such a moving place to have been. The buildings have a strange quality in the photos, I had to look at the background to see that the trees and grass don’t have the dislocated detail of the brickwork!
It was really magical – and felt like a deeply spiritual place. It definitely wouldn’t have felt like that if we’d been following huge tour groups around. There were some American groups there – I idly wondered if they visited all the places they’d carpet bombed…
Extraordinary buildings – hard to put into any architectural context – although, as you say, you can see an Indian influence. Like that fact that My Son is pronounced as if it was the English phrase but said in a Geordie accent.
I’ll not be able to think of My Son now except in a geordie accent… you’re right about the architectural context – the bricks and some of the shapes are a sort of mixture of various elements from SE Asia?
The buildings have a curious look of some of the smaller Mayan sites in the Yucatan
Yes, architecturally different but that same sense of growing out of the jungle. It was strange to see symbols of Shiva – makes you realise how interconnected many cultures are. Hoi An is an extraordinary mix of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese…
Despite the bombing, the building seemed to have retailed their elegance and dignity….certainly echos of India