10/7/2009

Today we went to the My Son (pronounced me) ruins. These Hindu ruins are left over from the Cham people who built the ruins somewhere between the 4th and 14th centuries. They are Hindu temples with lots of large structures and pillars. Walking around the ruins was unreal. It was like a scene from Laura Croft Tomb Radar. You see these red bricks popping up out of the jungle and they are covered in jungle growth. The closer you get to them the bigger they appear until finally you are standing right next to the ruins and they are huge, but more importantly they are intricately constructed with little statues and figures all over the buildings. I have always wanted to see ruins like these. I have dreamed of what it would feel like to stand next to them, to view the only remains of a society that was once great, but now has all but disappeared. I like to imagine all the houses that would have been in these jungles next to these stone buildings. What went through these peoples minds on a daily basis. Did they live happy lives or did they spend all day worrying about the current state of the economy or global warming. I am fascinated by the unknowns that surround this place. There are ruins all over My Son and you can see what appears to be the center of town, but then there are all these more obscure structures scattered about, some clearly for worship, but others the purpose is less transparent. A building has to be pretty important to build it of stone, stone is a lot of work, so you have to really want this building to last, but what makes a building that important. A trading center perhaps or maybe town hall. These are questions I can't really answer and some people may think they know, but do they really. These are the thoughts that run through my head while I walk around the My Son ruins.

After My Son we went to lunch at a restaurant/ school in Hoi An. The restaurant was called the Street Restaurant and it is a NGO that trains street children, in service jobs so they will have some form of a career in the future. Street children in Vietnam are essentially just kids who have no parents or guardians for various reasons and there either isn't room in an orphanage for them or they don't want to be in one so they live on the streets and tend to get into trouble, so this program provides them with a clean place to live, food, education and a set of job skills. Some children are trained as cooks, others as servers. It is great program, the food was fantastic and I was thrilled to help support these great students.