My Son

We woke to a warm cloudy day having had some rain earlier.  We visited the ancient ruins of a Champa temples at My Son which were constructed during the 4th to 14th century. Interestingly the Champa kingdom lasted a very long time from 200 AD until the 1800's. The Hindu temples here are dedicated to the worship of the god Shiva and are in various states of repair large part having been destroyed by bombing during the Vietnam War.  It was a fascinating site, dragonflies and butterflies were darting everywhere amongst the lush vegetation.  The temples were mainly sanctuaries for the various Kings, priests, dancers, servants and tombs.  

We return to Hoi An for lunch, a dress fitting and some browsing in the shops before I met up with three others from our group for a cookery lesson.  It was very interesting and we made some delightful food which we consumed later in the restaurant.  The most interesting things I remember were char grilling a piece of ginger and several shallots before adding them to the Pho soup stock and barbecuing a duck breast over a base of rice husks with sugar and green tea leaves added.  The duck breast went into the fresh spring rolls.  The variety of herbs used in their food is so very nice, a pity we can't get hold of them all.