Cham ruins in My Son, pronounced
mee sawn, which translates into beautiful mountains. These were erected by the Champa kingdom between the second and fifteenth centuries as a sort of religious centre. The Cham were always a thorn in the Khmer flesh, and the Khmer capital of Angkor was on more than one occasion sacked by them. They were overpowered by the expanding Vietnamese kingdom when the latter extended its borders southwards, and assimilated into the Vietnamese state. Today, they are a ethnic minority living in the south of the country.
These ruins were impressive, to speak the truth, but doesn't compare to Angkor. A simple illustration on how the two differed vastly in scale: we spent four days in Siem Reap, of which only one full day was devoted to the exploration of the Angkor sites, and yet we were unable to see all the temples, while a brief two hours were all we needed to cover nearly all the Cham sites in My Son. Both areas are still very much ridden with land mines, and so rendered some areas out of bounds.
The My Son ruins were nestled at the bottom of a lush valley, and afforded the visitor a picturesque panorama all around. It felt grander and less mysterious than Angkor, which was built in the middle of a jungle, and has since been overran by it.
Though these aren't spared Nature's inexorable, creeping advance as well...
French archaeologists restoring the temples in the nineteenth century very blandly gave them alphabetical labels. Only two clusters amongst the ten that were discovered closely approach the original majesty of old. A few are in areas enclosed by a cordon sanitaire of unexploded ordnances. The other eight, like this one, were entangled in the war by Vietcong guerrillas who sought shelter there, and had been almost razed to the ground by American bombs.
Cham ruins in My Son, pronounced mee sawn, which translates into beautiful mountains. These were erected by the Champa kingdom between the second and fifteenth centuries as a sort of religious centre. The Cham were always a thorn in the Khmer flesh, and the Khmer capital of Angkor was on more than one occasion sacked by them. They were overpowered by the expanding Vietnamese kingdom when the latter extended its borders southwards, and assimilated into the Vietnamese state. Today, they are a ethnic minority living in the south of the country.
These ruins were impressive, to speak the truth, but doesn't compare to Angkor. A simple illustration on how the two differed vastly in scale: we spent four days in Siem Reap, of which only one full day was devoted to the exploration of the Angkor sites, and yet we were unable to see all the temples, while a brief two hours were all we needed to cover nearly all the Cham sites in My Son. Both areas are still very much ridden with land mines, and so rendered some areas out of bounds.
The My Son ruins were nestled at the bottom of a lush valley, and afforded the visitor a picturesque panorama all around. It felt grander and less mysterious than Angkor, which was built in the middle of a jungle, and has since been overran by it.
Though these aren't spared Nature's inexorable, creeping advance as well...
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