My Son - Unesco World Heritage Site

My Son was built by the Champas who ruled Central Vietnam from c200AD to c1700AD until finally annexed by the Vietnamese in the 19th Century.

We awoke at 4:30 to be picked up at 4:50 to get to My Son which means Beautiful Mountain.

Sunrise...

Unesco declared it a heritage site in 1999. 

The Champa people were influenced by Hinduism they built temple complexes. The temples are of worship of Lord Vishnu.

My Son was used as a base by the Viet Cong during the Vietnamese / USA war, because an Act of Congress was declared prohibiting USA from bombing My Son.

The My Son complex used to consist of 70 structures, however today only 25 remain in various degrees of ruin. The Cham people erected structures that consisted of 3 forms:

1)The bases representing the world of humans

2)The tower body representing the world of spirits

3)The tower head represented the realm of the 2 worlds

The builders of My Son derived there cultural and spiritual influences from India in the form of the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Shiva is the central figure, his statues are all over Cham monuments.

No one is actually sure how the temples were built, the thin red bricks used required a huge amount of skill and there is no explanation as to how they managed to build them, only a couple of theories!

This is Vinh - our tour guide! He was so good!

This is a lingam, and because Shiva is the main God, it is called a Shiva lingam. It represents the symbol of male creative energy or of the phallus. The lingam is often represented with a yoni, the symbol of female creative energy. The union of the lingam and yoni can be interpreted as "inadvisable two-in-oneness of male and female, the passive space ad active time from which all life originates".

Lingam and yoni Representing the inseparability of the male and female principles and the totality of creation.

There is a HUGE lingam! LOL 

The ruins were pretty amazing to see. 

Here is a sculpture of Shiva.

My Son: My = Beautiful ; Son = Mountain

Gorgeous flower - I've finally worked out the close-up view on my camera! 

Spiders everywhere...

On the boat back to Hoi An.

We stopped at a little Island to see how they do the traditional wood carving.

The island we arrived on!

Little street on the islad. 

The HIV awareness poster...it just cracks me up! hahahahahahaha

hhahahahahahaha......heh heh heh ahahahahahaaaa...

Some of the carvings they do - pretty cool.

Traditional ornaments made out of egg shells.

Buddha carving.

Exquisite detail.

the lights on the wall in the shop.....LOL...."kommon" with a capital "K". 

Shopping for some chicken.... just grab a couple of live ones by the feet and keep walking!

Back to the hotel at 10:30...it was already about 100 degrees by then and we needed some air con!