My Son

No, I have not discovered a long unknown heir to my fortunes. Max the cat is still my one and only son. "My Son" is Vietnamese for "holy mountain" and visiting My Son was an interesting day trip out of Hoi An.

I booked a tour to My Son with my hotel and was picked up at 0800. The tour was not full so the minivan was comfortable. As always the tour was conducted in English although there were several non native English speakers touring. I resent the USA's efforts to dominate politics and business all over the world but I do enjoy the benefit that English is used worldwide as a common language of communication.

I wonder if non English speakers can understand the sometimes heavily accented English used here in Vietnam. I often struggle to catch words or phrases and they are speaking my language. How difficult it must be if you are Italian, Spanish, French, etc. to translate from Viet-English to standard English to your own language. It is the same, by the way with currency. Often prices here are quoted in unweildy Vietnamese Dong and also in US dollars. Fortunately for me, I have no further conversion to make. New Zealanders, Europeans, Japanese, etc. on the other hand must make an additional conversion. To explain my use of the word unweildy above, there are about 20,000 Vietnamese dong to one dollar. That means you must move the decimal place 4 to the left and then divide by 2 to calculate the dollar amount. When I go to the ATM here to withdraw money the maximum I can withdraw at one time is a whopping 2 million dong. 2,000,000 Dong is only $100, but it seems like a lot and it is difficult to count the number of zeroes on a bill .

Well, that was an aside and now back to the main event. My Son was founded in the second century by people called Cham who came to this part of the world from Indonesia. The religion was a localized form of Hinduism so there are remains of Shivas and Krishnas all around. The Chams ruled the area for about 14 centuries. I noticed the similarity of the artwork (sculpture) here to that in Cambodia's Angkor Wat, not surprisingly, but, inexplicably similar to some that I have seen in temples in Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. It seems to me there must be some anthopological connection between these cultures so far apart. I would like to research the idea when I have time.

Time and civilization have taken their toll on the temples and there were many more temples than now exist. A great amount of damage was caused by American bombing during the war. On this point even the official stand does take some responsibility since the Viet Cong used the temples as hideouts thus prompting the bombings. It is not often that the American actions are portrayed so magnanimously.