Several times in our travels throughout SEA, we’ve come across the remnants of the Champa civilization. Today we visited My Son, which are the most famous Champa ruins in Vietnam. The UNESCO-listed site consisted of several red-brick temples in about a dozen groups. Grass and weeds were growing out of the temples and some were leaning so heavily, I thought they were about to topple over. Unfortunately, many of the best preserved statues and artwork had been removed and taken to the National Museum in Hanoi. So we settled for crome-plated plaques here and there, which essentially said, “This [description of piece] was removed and is now kept in the National Museum in Hanoi, artifact number ….” Besides being stripped of its best art, I was disappointed with our trip to the temples for a few other reasons. One, it was really crowded with tour groups and tourists. Two, the temples just weren’t very impressive. Perhaps this is a bit unfair, because we’ve seen awesome Champa ruins in Lao and Cambodia and the impressive ruins of Indianized kingdoms from Thailand to Indonesia. And I still cannot figure out why civilizations in the hottest climates built all the great temples of the world. So much for the myth that tropical people are lazy. It was an interesting side trip, but walking around mediocre, stripped down My Son in the humid midday heat won’t make our highlights list.