Rain, shopping, and air raids.

Ah, yes, rain and shopping. In Hoi An, one begets the other. When it’s pouring outside, there’s no better way to spend the afternoon (and all your money) than with one of the thousands of tailors throughout the city. In our two days here, A and I have managed to do some serious damage. Need a winter coat even though it’s hot as balls and humid like a Southern swamp? Of course we do! I’m not even joking, A and I both purchased wool coats—Ashley actually had hers made to order, whereas I just bought one straight off a mannequin. And it’s incredible. It almost makes me look forward to a cold winter in Wellington.

Anyway, if you can manage to tear yourself away from the shops, Hoi An is a charming little old-school colonial town. The buildings are somewhat worse for wear, but the architecture is lovely. And if you can manage to tear yourself away from Hoi An full stop, there are some beautiful Hindu ruins called My Son about an hour outside the city. Though they’re over a thousand years old, they were apparently lost to the jungle about four hundred years ago when their inhabitants—known as the Champa—moved south to the Mekong Delta. They weren’t rediscovered until 1898 when the occupying Frenchies stumbled across them.

Our guide, a Vietnamese man with the most hilarious accent I’ve ever heard, informed us that the building techniques used by the Champa people remain a mystery to this day. They were somehow able to construct brick pyramids without using any mortar, and the bricks all fit together perfectly. When he showed us the modern restoration attempts, they looked pretty shoddy in comparison. But if the Cham were such awesome builders, why would their temples need restoring in the first place? Good question. The answer is that President Nixon ordered the US military to bomb the shit out of the place during the Vietnam War in order to take out the Viet Cong who were hiding there. Thank you, Nixon, for single-handedly causing the destruction of thousands of years of history. It did so much to stymie to spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.

Oh wait, no, it didn’t.

Anyway, despite Nixon’s best attempts to turn splendor to rubble, My Son is still an incredibly beautiful place to visit. And after a stifling hot day in the jungle, there’s nothing better than returning to Hoi An just in time to pick up your brand new wool coat.