We're up early today and off to Mỹ Sơn with Mr Loc (the boyfriend of Miss Lee from Ancient House) as guide. Left the hotel at 6:30am, grabbing some fruit, bread and jam from the dining room as we went. The keeper of the kitchen was still asleep on a mattress on the floor but didn't wake.
The early start was to get to Mỹ Sơn before the tour buses. A bus tour would have cost us about $8. The tour with a Mr Loc as guide in a minibus only cost around $11 each - although that was a bit more than quoted. When Mr Loc turned up, he had the story that he could not get a small vehicle and a minibus would cost another $5. It's a bit hard to know whether they are "having a go at you" in Vietnam, but we figured he was genuine enough and it's only a few dollars, after all.
Mỹ Sơn was amazing, and Mr Locke turned out to be an excellent guide - very knowledgeable. The complex was constructed between the 4th and the 13th century by the Kings of Champa, an Indianized kingdom of the Cham people. The temples are dedicated to the veneration of God in accordance with Shaivism, and the God Shiva features prominently at the site (although Ganesh also gets some recognition as well). At one time, the site encompassed over 70 temples as well as numerous steles bearing historically important inscriptions in Sanskrit and Cham.
The temple complex is regarded as one of the foremost Shaiva Hindu temple complexes in Southeast Asia and is the foremost heritage site of this nature in Vietnam. It is often compared with other historical temple complexes in Southeast Asia, such as Borobudur of Java in Indonesia, Angkor Wat of Cambodia, Wat Phou of Laos, Bagan of Myanmar and Prasat Hin Phimai of Thailand. As of 1999, Mỹ Sơn has been recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
It's incredible to be able to touch buildings that are so old. And even though it is largely in ruins today (mainly because the site was a Vietcong base during the American War and was severely bombed), you are still able to get a picture of how amazing the area must have been in its heyday.
On the way back from Mỹ Sơn, we swapped the van for a boat to travel along Thu Bồn River to Hanoi, including visits to a pottery and a woodworking village. While both were interesting, one does get a bit sick of the badgering to buy (particularly prevalent at the Pottery Village). At the woodworking village we did purchase some chopsticks and a few boxes - cheaper than they had been offered in town.
Back to Hoi An and the Cargo Club for lunch. (Jill had spicy seafood soup (Yum!! she says) Jenny had Cao lầu (a regional Vietnamese noodle dish), Alex a club sandwich and Richard a burger). Then a little more shopping. We're starting to get the hang of bargaining in markets. "Duc Toi". One of our tour guides taught us this, and it's meant to mean "too expensive"- said with great emphasis, shaking one's head and beginning to walk off. The only issue is that we can't find any reference to this in the guidebooks, so we're not sure what we've been saying!!. We certainly weren't saying Đắt quá, which is apparently Vietnamese for "too expensive". Perhaps it was just our interpretation! Despite what it might have said, it seemed to work, at least on the street and in the markets - not so much in shops. Someone told us that when bargaining, to start at 1/3 of what they are asking but be prepared to pay 1/2. That seemed to work too.
Dinner tonight was not all that satisfactory (probably our first disappointment in Vietnam). We ventured across the river and found a restaurant there. It had a very extensive menu which turned out to be rather problematic, particularly when someone went searching for a toilet and discovered that the kitchen was minuscule. We then discovered that every few minutes someone would head off on a motorbike and return with food prepared somewhere else. Anyway, it took about an hour for our food to arrive, and when it did, it was pretty ordinary. It's all part of the experience!!
