What happened to Vietnam's ancient ruins?

In Cambodia, the temples of Angkor stretch over hundreds of kilometres, and tell the story of an almighty kingdom. Thailand has ancient ruins at Ayutthaya and Sukhothai. Tiny Laos is home to Angkorian temples at Wat Phou and the mysterious Plain of Jars. And to the north, China’s ancient treasures are too numerous to even begin listing.

But Vietnam's majority ethnic kinh people, have little to show by way of ancient structures, despite their riveting history, which began in the Red River Delta, around Hanoi, thousands of years ago.

Photo: Mark Bowyer Wat Phou, Southern Laos

Photo: Mark Bowyer Angkor Wat, Cambodia

What happened to Vietnam's ancient ruins?

I really don’t know.

I’ve been asking this question for a long time and have never felt very satisfied with the answers.

Some have proposed to me that Vietnam’s turbulent history has destroyed its ancient ruins. The French destroyed some of Hanoi's most impressive pagodas.

Others have said that the Vietnamese have been disinclined to build large lasting stone monuments preferring wooden structures that don't stand the test of time.

I’ve even been told that the modern-day official disinterest in heritage has long roots - that through history, Vietnamese have tended not to be especially concerned about creating lasting monuments, nor their preservation.

I have no idea if any of these explanations hold water.

What I can say is that any encounters you are likely to have with ancient ruins in Vietnam (I mean ruins more than 500 years old), will most likely be with the ruins of the Cham kingdom. There are Cham towers spread across southern and central Vietnam - with the most important located at My Son, around an hour’s drive from Hoi An or Danang.

Vietnam's Cham ruins are relics of an ethnically distinct Hindu empire, that thrived between the 4th and 14th centuries and controlled what is now central and southern Vietnam. The southward thrust of the Viet people from the Red River Delta around Hanoi, brought the collapse of the Cham kingdom, and it was ultimately absorbed into Nguyen Dynasty Vietnam in the nineteenth century.

There are a handful of ancient Vietnamese ruins in the north, but precious little remains of them.

Sites like the Hanoi Citadel and the Co Loa Citadel just outside Hanoi, are well worth visiting and date back more than one thousand years. In both cases though, there are no substantial structural remains that date back to their origin.

In the video above, I visit the Cham ruins at My Son, built between the 4th and 14 centuries, where extensive ruins still stand, despite the passage of time and US carpet bombing during the Vietnam War. They may well be the most important ancient ruins in Vietnam.