HoiAn Day 4: My Són ruins

Today was and early wake up for a bus that ended up be half an hour late. After an hours drive (~45km) out to the complex we headed in by foot and were given a quick chat about the overall My Són complex. It's an ancient complex, with the earliest buildings being from the 4th century, built by the Cham people of central Vietnam when the country was still mildly feudal and had three seperate kingdoms. The Cham were the controllers of trade as they held the middle ground of the rivers, they were first exposed to Islam by traders then Hinduism from India. Buddhism stuck in the north and some of the south but the entire complex built by successive kings were all worshiping Hindu gods, mostly Shiva though.

There are 4-5 sections of buildings, labelled from A to K depending on the architect and time scale (king wise). Not many of the buildings are in good condition due to bombings from the war; from the way that the Cham built the towers I'm almost certain that all the towers would be standing and be structurally sound to this day if they had not been damaged. The Cham use double fired bricks, the bricks are fired first then the structures were built they then basically set the building on fire and fired the bricks again making them very dry (no mould/lichen) and making the structures incredibly stable using no mortar.

Some of the carvings were still in decent condition although many of the figures faces had been lost to erosion and damage. There are guards in every building group stopping people from walking/climbing on or near ruins, they just yell but they have a job to do. 

Our guide was good at passing on details about how the ceremonies would've taken place only for the audience of the king in the inner sanctuary. As well as the significance of some of the building types. 

It's a world heritage site so I'll include a link to its information page at the end.

I liked the site, what I didn't like were some of the people on the other tours. You don't walk in front of someone who is clearly taking a photo, stop and then take your own. Nor do you need to spend 10minutes trying to take a group shot or a selfie to the point where you can't actually see the site you're taking the picture at. Let alone people who just see the place a pile of rubble 'which probably would be like this anyway', which FYI I highly doubt that it would need any major restoration if a couple of bombs didn't go off in the middle of them. Does it come across that I don't like large tour groups even when I'm in one? It wasn't as bad as Cambodia granted but still annoying. 

After the hour return by bus we wandered and got some lunch at a place called Miss Ly's, bit pricy but the food was good. I still prefer street food, one I can see them making it and two it just tastes amazing and I've never felt I'll from it. You just go where the locals do, they know which places are good. Then just an afternoon of wandering and repacking of bags for our trip to Hue (hway, like Jose) tomorrow lunch time.