Arriving at Danang City

Vietnam from the Air

Vietnam from the Air

I’ve got a chance to visit one of the most fascinating countries on earth – Vietnam. In this wandering – I didn’t end up in the more common destinations like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, which are on both extremes of the country. Our destination was Danang City in central Vietnam. This area has access to three UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Complex of Hue Monuments, Ancient town of Hoi Ann and the My Son Sanctuary.

Entrance to the Cham Museum

Entrance to the Cham Museum

Upon arival at Danang Airport, we were greeted with a not so modern looking airport. It was dark but not dirty. There were only a few immigration counters and couple that with the turtle’s pace of processing our travel documents, it took us around an hour to clear immigration. It does seem that Americans have a little more trouble entering the country, since we witnessed several of them holding up the lines. Their system is a little low tech since the immigration officers were just writing on paper. I have no idea how that works in this day and age.

Cham Sculptures

Cham Sculptures

Outsie the terminal building, we were mugged by touts asking us where we are going. At this point I experienced quite a bit of culture shock, since these guys do not speak English at all. We sought refuge at a nearby cafeteria at the airport building and composed ourselves. I got my book on Vietnam and went to the language section, luckily they have a prepared list of words commonly used by foreigners to get around. I started pointing to key words,”how far”, “train station”, “how much”, “train ticket”. The helpful staff told us that is it not very far. However we would need to go outside the airport grounds since it will be a little expensive.

More Statues

More Statues

Just outside the airport, we hired some motorcycles to the city proper. I found it a little uneasy hiring these kinds of public transportation. But it does seem that this is the common mode of transportation here. If you look at the roads, you’d see that the motorcycles vastly outnumber cars. I instructed the driver to bring us to a bank and then hung on for dear life. We needed to go to the bank to change money. It was a huge feeling to be holding millions and millions of currency in your hands. Underfortunately, it was only a figure as it really doesn’t convert to that much money. The bank staff were very helpful and spoke good English.

Carvings on the Wall

Carvings on the Wall

Our next goal was to go to the train station. At this point, just outside the bank, there was this guy in a motorcycle who spotted us and asked where we were going. Yes, everyone seems to always want to know where you are going, and they can spot tourists a mile away. Apparently this guy is part of a group organizing motorcycle tours of Vietnam. With the not-so-modern transport system of Vietnam this is a great way for foreigners to get around. We tried to ignore him and tried to go on our way but he was persistent, eventually we hired him to get to the Cham Museum. He called his friend and got oursevles another motorcycle and headed off.

Exquisite Carvings

Exquisite Carvings

It turns out that the Cham Museum wasn’t really that far away, but then again, in a foreign country with an uncomprehensible languange who knows whether we can find it on our own. The motorcycle dudes told us they’ll wait outside for us while we visit the museum. It was also a good chance for us to think about what they were offering.

Statues of All Shapes and Sizes

Statues of All Shapes and Sizes

The Cham Museum is a museum built in 1915 mimicking an ancient Cham building. It houses the largest collection of Cham artifacts in the world. It was quite a big complex of small buildings housing a lot of statues that were dug up or recovered. The Cham was a huge Hindu empire from 200BC. As can be seen in their art, the Champa Kingdom was heavily influenced by Indian culture. Little wonder since the nearby kingdoms in Cambodia and Thailand were also all heavily influenced by Indian culture.

Awesome Statue

Awesome Statue

There were all sorts of statues on display here at the museum and it was fortunate that photography is allowed considering that it is a museum. The museum is clean and obviously well maintained. There were even sections where there was actual archeological work going on.

The museum was a good introduction to ancient Vietnamese culture. As I would know later, it is soon to be a introduction to ancient South East Asian culture. We went outside not really thinking about the two guys who were still waiting for us at the entrance. Very persistent, we thought. We though of making a run for it but the two men kept bugging us about their travel program. Since we were starving, we asked them to bring us to a place to eat. They brought to some random restaurant nearby and had our first taste of the famed Vietnamese food.

Grilled Chicken Rice

Grilled Chicken Rice

I ordered a grilled chicken dish and it was quite good, a little small but it was ok. Then we got down to business. The two guys kept showing us their portfolio, which basically consists of pictures of foreigners in the tourist spots and some testimonials. Sounds fishy though, but these guys seem nice enough. So we agreed to hire them for a few days. Although we will be taking the train to Hue that afternoon. They will arrange for accomodation to meet us at the train station. They will then meet up with us when we get to the hotel.

We gave them a downpayment of half the agreed price and they sent us to the train station. It does seem to be convenient to hire them since we do not need to worry about how to get from place to place. Plus, these guys speak English. On the downside, you have to a pay a little extra for the convenience.

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