Tag Archives: Cham

My Son, Vietnam

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My husband and I visited My Son before we truly understood the full antiquity and diversity of the many ethnic groups living in Vietnam. I don’t recommend this approach. But the obvious care with which the site has been and is being restored speaks to the importance of this ancient site and the respect the Vietnamese have for it.

The sign above, located at the drop-off point where visitors must leave their cars and buses, gives some indication of the extent of the site. This drop-off area is still some distance from the actual historical site. A special electric vehicle brings the visitors along a specially built road to the actual sanctuary. Isolated towers may be seen in the distance, Piranesian ruins surrounded by jungle.

At our destination, we learn that My Son was built by the Cham people during the thousand-year heyday of the Champa kingdom (or kingdoms; apparently, scholars disagree), from the fourth to about the fourteenth century A.D. The Champa kingdom in central Vietnam, where My Son is located, was defeated by the Vietnamese from the north in 1471, and the Cham people fled south. Many still live in southern Vietnam.

My Son was only ever a temple complex, at a short remove from the capital city. The Cham were, at that time, Hindu. (Most of the ones living in the south today are Muslim.) And the magnificent red-brick temples of My Son were Hindu temples and other religious buildings.

Located deep in the jungle, the temples of My Son were allowed to fall into ruin for centuries, until the late 1800s, when the French attempted some restoration. But war put an end to that, and when the North Vietnamese used the site as one of their bases, the Americans bombed it. Bomb craters are still visible. Several of the temples were severely damaged.

Perhaps this is fitting for a site largely devoted to Shiva, the god of destruction and war. But the site is beautiful, the temples magnificent even in ruin, and the complex an important monument in the history of civilization on Earth. As visitors and citizens of a diverse and wonderful world, my husband and I are grateful that My Son is now being carefully restored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before leaving, we were treated to a performance of Cham music and dance. Quite a treat!

Cambodia – Tonle Sap Lake

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The Tonle Sap, or Great Lake, is one of the largest and most important fresh-water systems in southeast Asia. It’s also one of the most interesting. The lake is connected via the Siem Reap River to the Mekong River and is home to a number of communities of ethnic Cham and Vietnamese people who live on houseboats. During the dry season the Siem Reap River flows from the lake, which at that time of year is only about a meter deep, and drains into the Mekong River. During the monsoon season, however, the Siem Reap River reverses direction and flows from the Mekong River into Tonle Sap Lake. The lake grows much larger (by a factor of four or five) and deeper (by a factor of eight or nine), and the people move seasonally from lake to the mouth of one of its feeder rivers and back again, wherever the fishing is best.

We visited during the start of monsoon season, and the river leading to the mouth of the lake was lined with houseboats. (The brown color of the water is due to a high rate of sedimentation, a normal phenomenon of this ecosystem.)

  

“People here live pretty close to their neighbors,” our guide pointed out. “So do you know what they do if it turns out they and their neighbors don’t get along?”

“What?” we asked.

His eyes gleaming, he said, “They move! Home and all!”

And we were, in fact, lucky enough to see someone in the process of doing just that.

  

And there weren’t just houseboats. There were also shop-boats of all sorts, and cafe-boats and basketball-court-boats and church-boats. All of these migrate up and down the lake with the people.

  

 

There’s even a grocery delivery service.

Since many of the people are fishermen, they work in the evenings and at night, and they rest during the day. And so we saw a lot of people at home, many of whom were sleeping in their hammocks.

    

At the mouth of the river,we reached the end of the settlement and the open expanse of the lake.