On Friday, January 19th, we took the bus to the Champa ruins at My Son. The Hindu Champa kingdom occupied what is now central Vietnam from the second to the fifteenth centuries. Along the way, we saw kumquat trees in pots for good luck at the lunar new year, which was fast approaching (February 10). We stopped at an orchard where they were beeing grown. We visited the ruins and saw a Champa cultural show (the Champa people still exist as one of Vietnam's 54 ethnicities, but are now much farther south and are Muslim instead of Hindu).
We went back to Hoi An and had a very nice lunch at the Old Boat, Reu's sister restaurant. I took a nap, while Mary Joy went shopping and people-watching with some of the others. Later, Tom took us across the street from our hotel to the Cao Dai temple. Cao Dai is a religion that tries to synthesize Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity. We noticed that Vietnamese are not averse to the use of neon lighting in religious shrines--even, later, as a halo around the head of Christ on a crucifix.
Tom then took a group of us to a banh mi restaurant in the Old Town. Good. We walked back along the river.
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