Oh those Americans!

One sunny day; one rainy day, so far. And on the third day . . . it was hot, muggy and sunny. This was the day we'd pre-booked a tour to My Son, an archaeological site 50 klicks south west of Hoi An and the location of one of the holiest places of the ancient Champa Empire. We'd already seen some of the Hindu-based artifacts dug up from this site at the Cham Museum in Da Nang. This time, there was a chance to see the site for real. However, as with most things Vietnamese there wasn't much left to see. The architecture was originally of a similar nature to that unearthed in Angkor Wat only much older; well over a thousand years. Again, the site was discovered by French archaeologists who, having successfully revealed the temples and tombs of the ancient god emperors, promptly cut the heads off every Hindu statue, carving and figurine adorning said buildings and transported them to Paris museums for the delectation of French society. Accordingly, the Viets are trying to replace the heads piecemeal but with not much aesthetic success. Then came the Americans who did what Americans do best -- bomb the shit out of the place. The result is very unlike Angkor in Cambodia: there's not much left  to see and the jungle surrounding the tourist pathways is still said to contain US-strewn land mines. Again, paying the extra from a hotel-sponsored tour gave us a knowledgeable English-speaking tour guide which always provides an added visual dimension to the rubble.

They also gave us a boat ride back to Hoi An which was a lot cooler and more comfortable than the Viet tourist buses. Of course, there was an obligatory stop at a crafting village which was noteworthy if only because that walls of the town displayed the high water marks of flooding over the last 50 years. Like Hue, this whole region gets swamped every year, sometimes devastatingly. The local populace has to get moved out in much the same way as New Yorkers and New Orleanians and Queenslanders do when they get hit by the occasional hurricane (only you don't get to hear and agonize over that on the BBC news 'cos it happens all the damn time!). Finally arriving into the Hoi An by boat gives the whole town, with its islands and bridges and waterways, the look of a teeny weeny Venice.

A shower was called for before rushing back to one of the many street bars on the main river walk. Cold beer and margaritas while an orange ball of a sun dipped behind the buildings on opposite An Hoi Island. A mini-bar crawl later led us to the Faifoo Restaurant where we had a smorgasbord of local dishes culminating in a Vietnamese Hot Pot: a bubbling soup of seafood and vegetables in a large tureen surrounding what looked to be a piece of lava. Accordingly, we were in bed and asleep well before 9 o'clock proving, once again, that we're getting too old for this!