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DA NANG |
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Central Vietnam's dominant port and its fourth largest city, Da Nang
harbours few sights beyond the exceptional Cham Museum, but is an
unexpectedly amiable place and a major transport hub with air
connections as well as road and rail links. In the American War it
served as a massive South Vietnamese airbase and played host to
thousands of US troops as well as refugees searching for work. But
walking around today, it's the earlier, French presence which is more
apparent in the leafy boulevards and colonial-style houses.
Two blocks south of Cho Han market, past the soft, salmon-mousse
cathedral, colonial Da Nang is represented by a few wooden and stucco
houses at the eastern end of Tran Quoc Toan. From here turn right along
the river for 750m to reach the Cham Museum , at the south end of Bach
Dang (daily 7am-5pm; $2), the most comprehensive display of Cham art in
the world. Its display of graceful, sometimes severe, terracotta and
sandstone figures gives a tantalizing glimpse of an artistically
inspired culture that ruled most of southern Vietnam for a thousand
years. Exhibits are grouped according to their place of origin: My Son
(4-11C), Tra Kieu (Simhapura; 4-10C), Dong Duong (Indrapura; 8-10C), and
Binh Dinh (11-15C).
Da Nang's Cao Dai Temple , at 63 Hai Phong opposite the hospital, was
built in 1956 and is Vietnam's second most important after Tay Ninh . An
elderly archbishop, assisted by seventeen priests, ministers to a
congregation here said to number 50,000. The temple is a smaller,
simpler version of Tay Ninh, dominated inside by the all-seeing eye of
the Supreme Being and paintings of Cao Dai's principal saints, Lao-tzu,
Confucius, Jesus Christ and Buddha. Adherents gather to worship four
times a day (6am, noon, 6pm, midnight).
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