My Liberation Day

Today Vietnam celebrates 'Liberation Day,' a government holiday commemorating the fall of Saigon.

This is one of those weekends where I would always head as far away from the beach as I could to get away from the crowds and the insane traffic (and numerous fatal traffic accidents) in Mui Ne.

No better day to go for a drive out to the countryside, through some minority village, hike into the jungle and pick a swimming hole at one of my many favorite waterfalls. Napping in the stream, I'd wake up to fish nibbling on my toes or a curious giant, purple, freshwater crab poking me to see if I'm alive or not. They are so cute. Lunch is a daypack full of tropical fruit (lychees, mandarin oranges, plums) I bought on the side of the street and some durian pastries and xoi ngot.

The walk back to my motorbike, which I left in the tribal village, would be a race to avoid the afternoon rains. Dark thunder clouds looming and booming. Jungle fowl (wild ancestors of the common chicken) dart across the path and into stands of red flowers. Back in the village some men are BBQ'ing assorted buffalo body parts. There's a tall, decorated bamboo pole with grass ornaments hanging from it. All the men are seated around a jar of ruou can, nearly passed out.

The sun sets as I start my motorbike. For the next 30 minutes I'm pelted with thousands of tiny mosquitos and gnats. Then I get thumped on my chest by a bat that swooped down at just the wrong moment. I stop for a bag of sugar cane juice in Ma Lam, sipping it with a straw as I drive. Back in Phan Thiet its bo bit tet or maybe bun thit nuong on Tuyen Quang street for dinner. Make that 2 bowls. I grab a bag of che bui (pomello pudding, but the English translation doesn't do it justice). No Ice. As I drive I bite a hole in the corner and squeeze the gummy rice pudding, peanuts, coconut milk and pomelo peel in my mouth, being careful not to squirt it all down my front (as I often do).

Up the hill past Thap Po Shanu, the 8th Century Cham towers. A barn owl flies overhead and dumpy little painted frogs crawl across the road. Most of them are squashed by moto drivers before they reach the other side. The night-time pit vipers I used to see on the road almost 10 years ago are all gone now. Eaten by the locals. There's a sweet smell of jasmine in the air and a cool breeze that comes between the rain showers. Choirs of frogs sing in the bushes and on up into the cemetery hill.

Past the old execution site. Ten years ago they used to line up the condemned there in the mornings. Down the hill towards Victoria. There's another dead man there, sprawled in the ditch by his broken motorbike. Drunk and driving too fast... his grey matter will remain there on the road until it is completely washed away by the rain over the coming weeks. The hotel security are there so I keep driving. Down the hill and around the corner. I'm back in Mui ne.

It's late. No crowds, no traffic, no more communist flags. The patriotic music praising Uncle Ho and the Socialist revolution on the market loudspeakers is long over. Just the sounds of rain and frogs into the night. Thats my kind of liberation.

12 Politically-Incorrect, Common Sense Rules for Tourists in Vietnam & Cambodia for Earth Day 2012

1. Leave your garbage in the city street. Trash collectors pick up garbage and sweep the streets every night in most cities. Other than driving your garbage to the dump yourself or burning it, this is the only method of disposal.

2. Throw plastic bottles anywhere. A lot of poor people make a living picking them up and turning them in. They won’t lay there for more than a day.

3. Do leave the lights on when you go out. It discourages thieves and it keeps you from getting mugged in urban areas, or bitten by cobras, vipers and other nasties in rural areas.

4. Do flush the toilet liberally. It keeps mosquitos from hatching.

5. Don’t use government tour agencies, hotels, restaurants, ‘tourism information centers’ or other government services. In general these government businesses drain local communities (particularly ethnic minorities) of income from tourism as all the money goes to government officials and government ministries. Do use locally-owned businesses and patronize local residents, but often its difficult to determine who-is-who until you are on the ground.

6. Don’t give money to beggars and street kids in tourist areas. By alleviating your own guilt and feeling of awkwardness rather than striving for more difficult and long-term solutions, you encourage the problem rather than making it better.

7. In general don’t visit orphanages and be weary of voluntourism. A thousand and one scams are built around these new industries. Instead, do your research and decide which organizations to donate to after careful consideration. There is however nothing wrong with checking up on those organizations when you do visit.

8. You know all those signs you find in your hotel room talking about how environmentally conscious the hotel is, and how you can help them save the universe by not having your sheets changed or your towels washed? Its all a load of crap designed to save the hotel money. Don’t feel obligated to play along unless you are sure you really don’t need the services.

9. Do use lots of plastic bags when you shop. They make great rain covers for handbags and other valuables when your are out and about during rainy season, and are excellent protective covers for bags when traveling in busses, trains, planes and other situations where you can’t control whether someone dumps seafood juice all over your bags.

10. Do eat lots of meat when you are in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are unapologetic carnivores and some of their best dishes include beef, pork, chicken and seafood. There is nothing safer or healthier about eating vegetarian dishes than meat dishes in Vietnam. Most of the vegetarian dishes are made with fish sauce, pork fat and other animals' assortments and besides, you’d panic if you knew about all the pesticides, pollutants and preservatives pumped into Vietnam’s ‘fresh’ produce anyway.

11. Don’t use bicycles or rickshaws in Vietnam cities. They aren’t safe because of traffic and thieves. As a general rule the more petrol a particular form of transportation uses, the more convenient, comfortable and quickly one travels. In fact, any stint longer than 5hrs is best done by airplane (unless traveling coastal Vietnam, and then a train can be nice, under the right circumstances).

12. Be very weary of anything labelled ‘eco-tourism’ or ‘eco-‘ anything, particularly in Vietnam. The Vietnamese idea of eco-tourism is to take a location of natural beauty (or rather have a government official seize it), strip the foliage, put up a 2-star hotel posing as a 4 or 5-star resort, then round out the property with a karaoke bar, massage parlour, and in-house escort service. Any remaining animals in the forest are served up on platters in the in-house restaurant or left in cages for the kids to poke with sticks. This doesn’t always hold true—there are indeed some very fine ecotourism home-stays and activities, generally associated with national parks and nature reserves—but these are exceptions and not the rule. Investigate before you make a booking. Vietnam is still a beautiful country with some very fine patches of natural forest left—but sometimes its better to scout these with a knowledgeable, private guide rather than sit in an institutionalized ‘eco-tourism resort.’

Google, Facebook and Vietnam’s War on Free Speech: The Latest Today

As previously reported, Vietnam has announced a new draft decree aimed to force foreign internet companies (particularly Google and Facebook, according to government officials) to open local offices in Vietnam, pay state tax, censor user content and provide private user information to the government. The decree will be voted on in June.

Yesterday I spoke to a rep from Google’s Singapore office who wished to alleviate growing concerns over the decree. She said that Google reps had indeed flown to Vietnam a year ago to discuss issues of concern. However, she said that Google only just learned about the new Decree two weeks ago (along with the rest of us), so obviously the Decree was not a point of discussion at their previous meeting. Thus, she said, statements in Vietnam state media about Google agreeing to the demands in the decree were merely speculations of local Vietnamese company owners, and were unfounded.

The Google rep went on to say that Google’s impression is that the Vietnam government has not reached a consensus on the issues outlined in the decree (as described by the Vietnamese media), and that these details are still under discussion within the government. At this time, she told me, Google is taking a ‘wait and see’ approach. She assured me that whatever Google might do in the future—it would do so with complete transparency to the public.

So where does this leave us? 

In the meantime, events of the last week have continued to devolve.

On April 12, in the National Assembly Standing Committee Meeting, officials resolved to tighten restriction on unlicensed print publishing, stating that “Many cases of illegal printing have had a negative impact on the country's political and social development.”

On April 18, Hanoi placed new restrictions on event organizers and stage performers, clamping down on all unlicensed performances and departures from government-approved scripts. Already the law requires prior government approval of all schedules, speeches, song lists and lyrics, etc. for public events.

In addition to this the Vietnam government continues to arrest bloggers and journalists. On Monday, the Vietnam government charged three bloggers; Nguyen Van Hai, Phan Thanh Hai and Ta Phong Tan with “propaganda against the state,” a charge that caries up to 20 years in prison. The bloggers belong to the “Free Journalists Club,” a rare, independent media organization outlawed by the government. Nguyen Hoang Hai (also known as Dieu Cay), is also a member of the group and has been in prison since 2008. His precise location and condition is currently unknown. The imprisoned journalists are just the latest of dozens of cases where bloggers have been sent to prison and re-education camps, some without even a mock trial.

So what will happen in June?

The Ministry of Information’s new ‘Anti-Google & Facebook Decree” will be passed into law in June. The Vietnam government has nothing to lose by passing the law. Once signed, then it will be left to the Ministry of Information to figure out the implementation later.

The Facebook ban will become official. The government began blocking Facebook in late 2009 after issuing a secret memo to ISPs, which was leaked to the public just prior to its implementation. However, there was never an ‘official,’ public Facebook ban. Now there will be, and if the government possesses a more effective mechanism to block Facebook, it will use it.

Vietnam will not block Google Search. Both the government and commercial interests depend on Google Search as much as the rest of us. They won’t go this far, yet.

Vietnam will block secondary Google services. As much as some of us may like YouTube, Google+, Blogger or other Google services, these are neither important to the function of the government, nor to the Vietnam economy. Some or all of these services will be blocked, particularly due to content hosted which is objectionable to the communist government. This will not be the first time either. The government has blocked Google News Search in the past, and selectively blocks Google Blogger accounts already.

After this happens, the next question is, what will Google and Facebook do about it, if anything at all?

Photos from Khmer New Year 2012 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Below are photos from this weekend's long Khmer New Year holiday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. New Year's eve is April 13. The festival is actively celebrated the 13-16. The days are fixed (unlike Vietnamese Tet or the Cham New Year), though originally based on a lunar calendar.

You can really almost never go wrong with a photo of Wat Ounalom on the riverside in Phnom Penh. Attractive, iconic and it always seems to be backed by blue sky. Too bad I missed the festivities at the Wat, whether by arriving late, or cancelation due to heavy rain the night before.

No banana boats here. We're inland. Just banana bikes.

Bananas are a spirit altar favorite in Southeast Asia, whether because they are dirt cheap, the bunches look nice when intact, or some symbolic meaning I know not.

The Royal Palace lit up at night.

The tourist gate to the palace (closed at night).

Games at Wat Phnom.

The pots are full of money (small riel bills donated by the audience) and talcum powder, which makes a great little explosion when broken.

Wat Phnom's new holiday Naga guardian. 

Family spirit altar for the new year.

Most people head for the countryside to their own villages to celebrate Khmer New Year. This means a lot of shops and services close down for several day or even a week or more. Unfortunately this means trash pick-up too, and trash accumulates fast during family holidays. There ends up being a pile like this every few meters in some neighborhoods. The rats & roaches are doing conga lines...

See photos and explanations from Khmer New Years past in Phnom Penh.

Hobbit Photos from the Hobbiton Movie Set in New Zealand

13.11.12 Update: View my story and photos for The SyFy Channel's Blastr.

The Shire. The Lake at Hobbiton Movie Set. Bag end sits at the top of the hill in the middle, overlooking the lake. Hobbit holes below.

In January I visited the Hobbiton Movie Set in Matamata, New Zealand, while staying in Rotorua. The cast and crew had stopped filming just a few weeks earlier, and were now on their Christmas holidays. It was an amazing experience. I couldn't believe I was allowed to just walk through Hobbiton, recreated as it appeared, in the very same spot in Lord of the Rings, and will appear on screen again in December 2012. I was just informed that my confidentiality agreement has been lifted, so I'm happy to give you a little iPhone preview of my adventure.

THE Bag End.

 Just think, Bilbo and Gandalf could have stood in this very same pile of sheep poop.

 Hobbit homes built by Guillermo del Toro, which won't actually appear in the finished film.

A giant sneaks into the shire. 

I'm not sure if I'll fit. 

Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo, the whole lot of dwarves... 
they all passed along these very same lanes. 

The view from Bag End, what Gandalf and Bilbo really saw as they blew smoke rings. 

The set is located on a working sheep farm. Be sure to have a browse through the gift shop with quality replicas and souvenirs made by the same folks at Weta Workshop who made the movie props.

Seems like every tour in New Zealand ends with a sheep shearing!

You too can now visit the Hobbiton Movie Set. Book your tour at:

Hobbiton Movie Set & Farm Tours
The Shires Rest Cafe
501 Buckland Rd
Hinuera
Matamata 3472
New Zealand
Ph: +64 (7) 888 1505
www.hobbitontours.com

Visit Tourism New Zealand’s website for more information too: www.newzealand.com.

Book a Rotorua hotel with my trusted parter, Agoda:

As always, photos here are copyright Adam Bray 2012 and may not be republished without permission. Photos are published here with authorization.

Vietnam to Enact New Firewall; may censor websites ranging from Twitter, Facebook & Google to news services like CNN & BBC

New MIC decree could mean widespread government censorship of popular websites and direct monitoring of users, under threat of website black-outs. 

In the past few weeks the government of Vietnam has escalated the rhetoric against social networking and online search giants Facebook and Goole, accusing them (via state-run media) of tax evasion. The Communist government’s propaganda arm went so far as accusing Google of violating Vietnam’s national sovereignty by ‘mis-labeling’ disputed territory claimed by China. In Vietnamese-language media, state reporters also insinuated that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his millions by stealing user information and then re-selling it, though no alleged evidence was offered (at the end of the story the government reporter also admonished Vietnamese users, reminding them that Hanoi was making note of their political statements on Facebook).

Over the weekend Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) held a meeting to receive feedback from officials and government businesses on a new decree draft, which according to Thanh Nien News, will require foreign internet information services to open local offices in Vietnam, relocated network servers, pay government tax, and submit to government censorship. Companies would be required to sign a contract, including the duties of “removing information that violates Vietnamese laws, including those that are against Vietnamese government, damage social and national security and promote violence.”

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Do Quy Doan said at a conference on Friday that overseas internet information providers will be required to submit to the same censorship rules as state-run media, if they wish to continue providing their internet services to users in Vietnam. Additionally they would be required to collect private information of all users, which could be made available to the Ministry.

Vietnam already places restrictions on citizen bloggers and internet users. The current law restricts users to the subject matter of their own daily lives. Essays on politics and news items are expressly forbidden by law. This has resulted in brutal crackdowns on Vietnamese bloggers and even the 3-year prison sentence of French citizen, Pham Minh Hoang. Many worry that the Ministry’s new decree could lead to criminalization of Vietnam’s expatriate blogger community as well.

Sources which I consulted close to the Ministry of Information confirmed that as early as 2011, senior officials in the Ministry proposed blocking Google and Facebook entirely if they did not agree to open local offices, pay state tax and submit to government censorship of content (which would require relocating servers in Vietnam for direct Ministry oversight). Foreign companies would require a local partner (routinely a government-owned business) with a majority stake in order to continue to provide services to Vietnam internet users.

In late 2011, when I asked about Vietnam’s selective censorship of Google’s Blogger service, a Google representative confirmed that the company had been in on-going dialogue with the Vietnam government to ‘ensure a free and fair internet for all.’

It is unlikely that the Vietnam government would cut off access to numerous internet services across the board. Such a move would equally handicap the government and businesses across the country. However, Hanoi has repeatedly made it clear that it does intend to at least target Google and Facebook.

Hanoi has already demonstrated that it is not afraid to act, even if it means hurting citizens in the process. The Ministry issued a memo in 2009 ordering internet service providers to individually block Facebook. Implementation was intermittent and inconsistent but the site still remains unavailable to many users across the country. Vietnam also regularly blocks access to BBC, and has blocked Google News Search and CNN in the past. Numerous foreign political, religious and blog websites are also blocked by the communist government.

The Ministry’s new decree is expected to be passed into law in June of 2012, replacing decree 97/2008/NĐ-CP.

Adam Bray Publishing Update: Vietnam & New Zealand

I've been busy at work on a number of articles and books this year (as always). Most will come out toward the end of the year but here are a few new ones to tide you over:

From New Zealand:

Jetstar Magazine April 2012

"Hobbit Hopping': The article details a weekend Hobbit-themed adventure in Wellington, New Zealand. Featured are Weta Cave, Wellington Movie Tours, The Green Parrot, the Embassy Theatre, Chocolate Fish, Roxy Cinema and more...

You'll need to register for a quick login, then you can download the whole magazine (click the Adobe Acrobat icon) or view the magazine online. Otherwise the magazine is also available for free on Jetstar Airlines flights. See page 66 of the April issue.

From Vietnam:

Lonely Planet Vietnam 2012

I supplied local recommendations and a mini-interview in the Mui Ne Section. The Entry for the Long Wall of Quang Ngai is largely a summary for my BBC article as well. Its a very attractive book. Lonely Planet has started adding more color and photos to their books, now that they are under the helm of BBC.

Berlitz Handbook Vietnam 2012

This book was a lot of work. If I remember correctly, I'm the sole credited author on this one. More tour and experience-oriented than the Insight Guide and DK Eyewitness books that I often do, but still full of lots of photos. Closest thing I'd compare it to perhaps, is Lonely Planets's new 'Discover' guidebook series.

East & West Traveler January 2012

This is my most recent article on the Long Wall of Quang Ngai, with a lot of new information. The Long Wall was discovered just a few years ago, dating from the Nguyen Dynasty, and is Vietnam's largest and newest national monument. The link above is just to my article (PDF), as it appeared in the January issue of the magazine.

New Year of the Cham Bani

Cham Bani elders

It seems that there are actually fewer Cham Bani (Quasi-Mulsim) than Cham Balamon (Hindu). Tradition says that the Cham King Po Ro Me instituted the Bani as an officially-sanctioned, second sect of the Cham community. It’s likely that the Bani developed as coverts to Islam, which was introduced to the Cham kingdom centuries ago via trade with the far east. The Bani evolved over centuries, incorporating unique Cham beliefs; a mix of Animism and Hinduism. While the Bani maintain many Islamic beliefs (for example they do not eat pork and their sacred texts contain stories and teachings from the Koran), they also have a number of unique characteristics; as they are matriarchal (like their Balamon brethren) and freely drink alcohol.

Many Cham Bani (particularly in the Mekong, Cambodia and Malaysia) have been ‘converted back’ to a more fundamentalist, modern form of Islam. This has concerned many members of both the Bani and Balamon communities because converts to Islam generally adopt Malaysian or Middle-eastern Muslim culture and reject traditional Cham culture in entirety. Thus there is some fear that Cham culture will slowly be eradicated as more Cham are converted.

The Cham Bani also celebrate Rija Nukan (Cham New Year). However, the event, as I have observed it, is more rigid and ‘bureaucratic’ in the way it was celebrated—which I think partly is due to more government ‘oversight.' In Vietnam, the local communist governments tightly control and dictate the time, place and manner of how large religious events are observed; particularly by minorities.

This year the Cham Bani celebrate the Cham New Year on April 21, the day after the Cham Balamon.  Below are photos from a Cham Bani observance of Rija Nukan.

 Cham Bani women dancing

 Cham Bani elders and Holy men

 Cham Bani banquet offerings in iconic Bani basket coverings

Cham Bani women carrying banquet platter offerings

Rjja Nukan: Cham New Year in Vietnam

A video I took of a Cham Holy Man dancing in very special ceremonial attire which has been worn by select Cham elders for centuries.

The Kate Festival is often mistakenly called the Cham New Year. It is referred to as such in numerous guidebooks and websites, despite falling in the 7^th month of the Cham lunar calendar. Perhaps this is because many Vietnamese, and even many Cham who are ignorant of their own cultural heritage, observe that Kate has the biggest celebrations of any Cham holiday, much like Tet among Vietnamese festivals, and so they wrongly assume that it must be a Cham equivalent of the Chinese New Year.

It is however, the little-known holiday of Rija Nukan, that marks the new year for the Cham people. Given that Rija Nukan falls within several weeks of the Khmer New Year, it is possible that they share a common origin, although the manner and ritual in which the two cultures now celebrate their respective  festivals, are entirely different.

Unlike the better-known Kate Festival, Rija Nukan is celebrated in Cham villages, and not in their ancient red-brick temples. The chief observance, which includes food offerings, worship, music and dancing, is held at smaller religious meeting halls in each community. This makes it difficult for outsiders—even Vietnamese—to ever observe them, because one must know the precise time (although the Cham people share their own unique calendar, each village observes at a different appointed time during the festival), the location of any given Cham villages, and the exact place of the meeting hall.

This year, Rija Nukan falls on April 20. Below are photos from previous Cham New Year celebrations, as celebrated by the Cham Balamon of South-Central Vietnam.

Cooking soup

Incantations and offerings by Cham holy men

Dressing the deity

Offerings made by Cham matriarchs on behalf of their families

Matriarch Devotees in worship

Cham Holy man or High Priest in a trance-like dance

Cham musicians and Holy men at the alter

Cham priests prepare at the altar

Eggs and Chicken are common offerings, particularly when incantations and religious rites are involved

A big spread of fruit and desert offerings

Stay tuned for my next post: Rija Nukan, Cham Bani Style.

As always, these photo, video and stories are original and copyrighted. They may not be re-published without permission from the author.

Who are the Cham People: An Unauthorized History of Champa

"In Khanh Hoa are the Fierce Tigers

But in Binh Thuan there are Ghosts"

-an old Vietnamese saying

I’ll be sharing some photos from the Cham New Year in my next post but before I do I think it would be beneficial to write a little bit about who the Cham people are. I have lived a number of years in their homeland, and so both their history and culture have been a particular interest of mine. Having written more than a few chapters on both the history of Vietnam and Champa, I’ve done a lot of research myself. I’ve never come across a very accurate introduction to the Cham (written by other sources), so this may be a ground-breaker.

Po Klong Garai Temple near Phan Rang, Vietnam during the Kate Festival

The Cham people, or rather the kingdom of Champa, was an ancient matriarchal Hindu culture which once occupied approximately two-thirds of Vietnam, and portions of eastern Cambodia and Laos. Evidence of their habitation has been found as far north as Hanoi (pre-dating presence of the Vietnamese), the southern reaches of the Mekong Delta, and west to the banks of the Mekong River.

If we consider the ‘Sa Huynh People’ (a culture that flourished roughly 1000BC to 500AD and is known primarily for their jar burials) to be the ancestors of the Cham, then their oceanic trade routes and cultural influence extended at least as far east as Taiwan and the Philippines, and west to India. While China and Vietnam may fight over the South China Sea in modern times, it is only the Cham people who would have truly made continuous historical use of these islands—over thousands of years.

The Champa kingdom was a contemporary rival of the Kingdom of Angkor in Cambodia and the Vietnamese, who migrated as one or more hill tribes from Southern China. Military conflict and cultural exchange with the Cham did as much to shape the history of Vietnam and Cambodia as did China and Thailand, respectively. While Hanoi just celebrated its 1000 years, many Cham cities, such as Phan Rang, Phan Ri, Qui Nhon, Quang Ngai, and even the Nguyen Dynasty capital of Hue, have been inhabited by the Cham for several centuries longer than the Vietnamese occupied Hanoi.

The Cham were driven from their vast homelands over centuries of war with the Vietnamese and Cambodians. The Vietnamese drove the Cham south, and Angkor drove them east. By the 1800s the Cham were reduced to a small vassal state in what is now Ninh Thuan and Binh Thuan Provinces (known as the southern kingdom of Panduranga to the Cham).

In 1832, Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mang of the Nguyen Dynasty perpetrated a brutal holocaust of the Cham and finally stripped them of all autonomy. This gave rise to legends of terrifying ghosts seeking vengeance in the lost kingdom of Panduranga (Binh Thuan Province). Some may argue the Vietnamese have delivered them a new spiteful blow by planning to build their first two nuclear reactors in the heart of the Cham homeland, straddling the ancient Cham city of Phan Rang.

A Cham Holy Man Dancing at the Cham New Year

As a result of successive lost battles, there were several exodus of Cham from their homelands. The Cham were a multi-ethnic kingdom, and each exodus resulted in isolated and lost tribes of Champa dispersed across Southeast Asia. The Historical Cham now have distinct tribes in Hainan Island (China); an assortment of tribes in Central Vietnam, including the Hre, Jarai, Ede, Rai, Raglai, Churu Cham Ro, and their various allies; the Cham Balamon (Hindu) and Cham Bani (Quasi-Muslim) of Binh Thuan and Ninh Thuan Provinces; and the Cham Islam of the Mekong Delta, Cambodia and Malaysia. Other isolated communities also exist.

Unfortunately, little is written about the Cham in Vietnam history books or travel media (domestic or international), due to both a rather profound ignorance of the history of Vietnam and a prevailing racist attitude among both the Vietnamese and perhaps some of the very scholars who have studied them.

Georges Maspero, who wrote the original 1928 definitive (though now perhaps discredited) history of Champa, titled “The Champa Kingdom: The History of an Extinct Vietnamese Culture” implied that the modern Cham people were irrelevant and illegitimate heirs of Champa. French colonialists and explorers often recounted how the Cham were ‘even more lazy than the Vietnamese’ and lamented that the Cham seemingly had no desire to attain the glories of the ancient kingdom. Even contemporary scholarship, which focuses on temple ruins, statuary, ancient steles and the antiquated writings of neighbouring civilizations, rarely, if ever consults the holy men and intellectuals of the living Cham community, which possesses a wealth of ignored written documents and oral histories. Sadly this has perhaps led to a needlessly fragmented and misunderstood concept of Cham history and identity. The fact that the communist government has deliberately destroyed or contributed to the destruction of so many Cham temples since 're-unification' (I know of 7 such recently-destroyed ancient temple complexes in my own province of Binh Thuan alone) only compounds the problem. Certainly Hanoi’s efforts to shield minorities from interaction with foreigners has also greatly inhibited a holistic study of the Cham people.

Next Post: Cham New Year, a Photo Gallery. The Cham new year, which is NOT the Kate Festival, is later this month (April). For now, read my other posts on the Cham.

(As always, photos and text here are original and copyrighted. Neither text nor photos may be re-printed without permission.)