Hoi An to My Son

This morning, we got back on the bus and traveled about 50 km east to the headwaters of the Thu Bon River to one of the Cham kingdoms most sacred temple complexes at My Son. The temple complex once included over 52 separate temples, all in pretty good shape until 1969 when the NLF occupied many of the buildings and the US Air Force dumped thousands of bombs—carpet bombing—on the site to eliminate the guerillas. Since then, many statues inside have been looted and it has taken the locals a looooong time to begin the tedious and expensive work on conservation and recovery. There is a lot of interest in restoring the monuments as they have been designated like Hoi An’s historic 17th century Japanese and Chinese homes as world heritage sites. The temples we visited were made in the 8th century and predate the much larger constructions at Angkor Wat by several hundred years. They are however very similar in design and most of them were dedicated to the god Siva. One of Siva’s representations is that of a round linga located inside a square yoni. Siva is both the destroyer and the renewer of life, thus intensely important as a god in an agricultural society. Holy water is made from pouring it over the linga and then capturing it as it drops from the yoni, so some of us tried it out after cleaning the dirt off this stone. Others, such as Connie Chu and Hue Pham, sought to gain some of its magical powers in a more unorthodox way, apologies if we have offended any Sivaites.

Finally, we were very surprised to find that our College of Foreign Languages colleague, Huy, was in fact an incarnation of Siva, something that had we known we might have simply flown here on a chariot pulled by his bull Nandi and perhaps caught a glimpse of his immortally beautiful consort Shakti. And Huy told us he was a bachelor!

Coming back into Hoi An this afternoon, the group opted out of more afternoon touring in exchange for some free time to explore this little historic town, especially the dozens of silk shops that offer to tailor clothes for the tourists in 24 hrs at amazingly cheap prices. Others are heading out to the nearby beach for a swim while others like Scuppy and me are simply holed up at the Van Loi Hotel enjoying a nice, air-conditioned afternoon nap.