My Son Sanctuary: Going Early, and What Survived

My Son is a Hindu temple complex in a valley about an hour inland from Hoi An, built by the Champa kingdom over roughly nine centuries. It is the most important Cham site in Vietnam and it is a ruin in the real sense.

The brickwork is the thing to look at. The Cham built without visible mortar, and how they bonded the bricks is still not fully settled. Restored sections are easy to pick out because the modern joints show.

It is a smaller site than Angkor or Bagan and comparisons to them set the wrong expectation. Go for the brickwork, the carving and the setting in the valley rather than for scale.

⚠️ There is almost no shade at My Son and the valley holds heat. By ten in the morning it is genuinely punishing for most of the year, and by midday people cut the visit short.

The early departures leave Hoi An before dawn and get you into the site as it opens, in cool air, low light and with far fewer people. The difference is not marginal; it is the difference between an hour you enjoy and an hour you endure.

The cost is a very early alarm, and it is worth it. Most tours include breakfast on the way or at the site precisely because nobody has eaten.

Take water. There is limited shelter once you are walking between the groups of towers.

Parts of My Son are missing, and the reason is in the ground: bomb craters, some of them still obvious, from American bombing during the war when the valley was used by Viet Cong forces.

One of the largest temple groups was effectively destroyed. What stands today is a fraction of what was recorded by French archaeologists earlier in the century.

Guides differ in how much they dwell on this. It is worth asking, because without it the gaps in the site look like ordinary decay, and they are not.