Destinations The Central My Son
My Son
Vietnam’s most evocative Cham site, My Son lies 40km southwest of Hoi An, in a bowl of lushly wooded hills towered over by the aptly named Cat’s Tooth Mountain. My Son may be no Vietnam Angkor Wat, but it is now on UNESCO’s World Heritage list and richly deserves its place on the tourist map. The riot of vegetation that until recently enveloped the site has now largely been cleared away, but the tangible sense of faded majesty still hangs over the moldering ruins, enhanced by the assorted lingam and Sanskrit stealer strewn around and by the isolated rural setting, whose peace is broken only by the wood-gatherers who trace the paths around the surrounding coffee and eucalyptus glades.
Excavation at My Son have revealed that Cham kings were buried here as early as the fourth century, indicating that the site was established by the rulers of the early Champa capital of Simhapura, sited some 30km back towards the highways, at present-day Tra Kieu.(See box on p.238 for more on the Kingdom of Champa). The stone towers and sanctuaries whose remnants you see today were erected between the seventh and thirteenth centuries, with successive dynasties adding more temples to this holy place, until in its prime it comprised some seventy building. The area was consudenred the domain of gods and god-king. And living on site would have been an attendant population of priests, dancers and servants.
French archaeologists discovered the ruins the late nineteenth century, when the Cham’s fine masonry skills were still evident – instead of mortar, they used a resin mixed with ground brick and mollusk shell, which left only hairline cracks between brick course. After the Viet Cong based themselves here in the 1960s, many unique building were pounded to oblivion by American B52s, most notably the once magnificent A1 town. Craters around the site and masonry pocked with shell and bull holes testify to this tragic period in My son’s history.
