Mỹ Sơn: Legacy of the Cham People

About one hour to the west of Hoi An, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mỹ Sơn, was an important religious center of the Cham people. The earliest Cham settlements in what is now central and southern Vietnam date back to the 3rd century CE. At some point early in their history, the Cham came into contact with Hinduism and adopted some variant of that religion. While there is debate about the extent to which the Cham in Vietnam were a unified kingdom, there is no question that Cham polities functioned throughout much of Vietnam for hundreds of years. They were traders and seafarers – Hoi An was originally a Cham port city and trading center – who developed a sophisticated civilization that presented formidable challenges to the Vietnamese living in the northern part of today’s Vietnam. For many years, there were ongoing conflicts and wars between the Cham and the Vietnamese. As the Vietnamese moved south, they eventually overran the Cham and absorbed their culture, though it was not until the 19th century that the last Cham enclaves were subdued.

Vietnamese friends have told me that the Cham people have been completely assimilated into the Vietnamese nation. While I suspect that is largely true, I have read that there is still a small, distinctly Cham ethnic minority in the country. How and to what extent Cham culture and customs have influenced the development of Vietnamese culture, I simply do not know enough about the very complex history of interaction between to two peoples to comment.

I have made two trips to My Son. The first time I went, it was a cloudy gray day. The second time I went, it was a cloudy and raining gray day. The photo above is from my second visit in November of 2024.

The Pink Church, Saigon

The Tan Dinh Church (Nhà thờ Tân Định) is a Saigon landmark located along Hai Ba Trung, as that street runs through downtown, making its way from the Kieu Bridge to the Saigon River. The Roman Catholic church was built by the French and completed in 1876 at a time when Vietnam was divided into three colonies, all part of French Indochina. Today, it belongs to the Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City.

The church was painted pink in 1957, or so Wikipedia tells us. Although Tan Dinh Church is surely the best known pink church in the country, the nickname could also be applied to the Catholic cathedral in Da Nang, which was also painted the same shade of pink at some point. I have no idea where this color scheme comes from. I cannot recall seeing any pink Catholic churches elsewhere in the world.

This photo was taken in June of 2025. I’ve made several passes at Tan Dinh Church during various visits to Saigon, and this is the first image I am happy with. I’m shooting from the second floor patio of a coffee shop across the street, and as the clock on the church notes, it is just past 5:30 on an early summer afternoon. The sun is behind some thin clouds near the horizon; while there is plenty of light available, it is diffused and softened by the clouds in a way that matches up nicely with the pastel palette of the church. As always, the sensor on the mirrorless Nikon Z7 II does an admirable job of capturing the scene.

Mid-Autumn Lion Dance, Hoi An

Monday evening was the culmination of the Mid-Autumn Festival (Tết Trung Thu) in Vietnam with a huge full moon in the sky and troupes of lion dancers on the streets entertaining holiday crowds.

The image above shows a small troupe performing along the street in front of a restaurant. In addition to the restaurant’s customers, a crowd of passers-by has gathered to watch the show. The lion below – two young men standing one on top of the other – was part of a well-known act that attracted a large crowd for its performance. The troupe arrived with two truckloads of equipment that it set up before the performance got underway. The photo shows only the first of several acts. I tried but failed to get this pair jumping along the row of pillars visible at the bottom of the image. I was standing on a tiny patch of grass amongst a big crowd and unfortunately could not get the combination of movement, light and reasonable focus needed to make an acceptable image. Feeling frustrated and claustrophobic, I decided to leave, figuring I could try for the motion image again next year.

Flowers at the Gate, Hoi An

To celebrate Tết, Vietnamese decorate the entrance ways to their homes and places of business with flowers, in some cases with two simple flower pots on either side of the entrance, in other cases with elaborate flower displays that can transform otherwise grey Hoi An streets lined with ramshackle buildings into rainbows of color.

Farming the Paddy Rice, Hoi An

A Vietnamese farmer tends a field of newly planted paddy rice.

Before new rice is sown, the paddies are flooded and the soil is plowed and smoothed, in Hoi An these days, using tractors. The paddies are then drained and the farmers broad cast the rice by hand onto the muddy soil. A few days after the seeds begin sprouting, the fields are flooded again and the new rice grows quickly. For the first two or three weeks after planting, the farmers wade into the paddies every day to work the soil with spades on long poles. I presume this effort loosens and aerates the soil to facilitate growth of the new rice. In any event, when the rice reaches a certain height and density in the fields, this work stops and the rice is left to grow until harvest time in the summer.