All Chammed Out!

It rained during the night. It REALLY rained! Up and about reasonably early on a battery hunt for Frances' camera and another quick walk around town. I bought my plastic rain cover for $1 in preparation for the rain that was still in the air.

First stop - the Marble Mountains, revered for centuries by the Vietnamese, five hills each named for an element: water, wood, earth, metal and fire. Legend tells of the Turtle God hatching a divine egg on the shore; the shell cracked into five pieces representing the five small hills. We went to a marble shop where they carve everything from tiny figurines to huge monumental buddhas and beasts and saw a guy using a fine electric file on the face of a statue, and two ladies polishing a happy Buddha in a pale green marble. Quarrying has now stopped here, they use marble from elsewhere in the country - but when Ho Chi Minh died marble from here was used for his mausoleum in Hanoi.

Thankfully, as it was very drizzly and slippy and I only had on flip flops, there is a new lift that takes you up to the main pagoda on Thuy Son, the biggest mountain, to save the 400+ steps to the top. There's also a few caves to explore but we only went in one as again the going underfoot was a bit treacherous and I thought to myself I could have done with Biker Bear's famous LED torch!!!

How do we do it? we got collared by yet another ancient lady, with a mouth full of totally black teeth - this time selling incense sticks but for only 20,000 dong - a dollar - and she kindly lit them for us and showed us the five places we were to place one. There was also a Buddhist service going on in one of the small temples and we sat in for a while, enjoying the chanting, the Buddhist version of Gregorian chants. Reminded me of Nepal and Tibet. I lit a few extra sticks and left them for a couple of special people who need a bit of good luck just now.

We drove to Da Nang to visit the Cham museum, bringing together the history of the Cham dynasty that ruled South Vietnam for a thousand years. The photo shows the museum and a huge linga and yoni, a potent symbol of Shiva. The linga and the yoni have been interpreted as the male and female sexual organs since the end of the 19th century by some scholars, while to practising Hindus they stand for the inseparability of the male and female principles and the totality of creation.

Many of the sandstone artefacts here were collected by the French archaeologists who discovered the Cham sites, and who opened the museum in 1916, though apparently some of the best statues found their way into private European collections. By the time we'd spent an hour here and countless more photos we felt thoroughly Chammed out!!!

Lunch was the full Vietnamese monty at a deserted beach resort, windy and cool, quite like a Scottish summer day! It was followed by a drive in torrential rain to the city of Hue, where we are ensconced on the ninth floor of a 10 storey hotel. It is dark, pouring with rain, and we are both shattered so blipping, a bit of OU homework, a nice long bath and an early night are on the cards and if we get peckish there is a restaurant downstairs with chips!!

Tomorrow we have a trip on the Perfume River and visit the Imperial Citadel and the Forbidden City and have to be at the railway station by 2pm for our overnight train journey to Hamoi. That should be...fun!!! So it will have to be a back blip, hopefully on Friday night.

a marble head and the incense lady here

Scooter dairy: bit thin on the ground today due to the weather:
Two lots of lengths of wire cable, about 10 ft long, carried on a shoulder
2 more pigs in baskets