My Son - Kingdom of Champa

We arrived on the 23rd outside of Hoi An after traveling 6h in the sleeper bus. Grab taxi took as quickly to our Hotel, the Art Museum Villa on Cam Nam Island, next to the ancient town of Hoi An.
On of our excursions there took as early in the morning at 5am to My Son, around 26km away from Hoi An.
My Son means „Beautiful Mountain“ and is the site of the most extensive Cham remains. My Son was once the most important intellectual and religious centre of the Kingdom of Champa. The Kingdom flourished between the 2nd and 15th century. Chams became Indianised through commercial ties. Adopting Hinduism and using Sanskrit as a sacred language and borrowing from Indian art. Many temples have been destroyed by US bombs in 1968 when the Vietcong did hide there.
The Chams were in constant state of war with the Vietnamese in the North and the Khmers to the Southwest. The Chams were finally absorbed by Vietnam in the 17th century.
Nowadays still 140.000 Chams live in Vietnam, a substantial ethnic minority.Read more