Vietnam: Ham Tien Market & Poshanu Cham Towers

Day 2 of Ho Chi Minh Trip ^_^  Part 2

After visiting the sand dunes (click here to read my blog post about the sand dunes, very interesting!), we were really hungry. However, we have no idea where to hunt for food and hence we decided to visit Ham Tien Market to check out if there's any interesting food to try. 

Ham Tien Market 

Ham Tien Market is also being called Mui Ne Market. It is a quite happening market where the locals will be here to buy their goods. There are wet and dry markets in within but it is consider quite a small market. 

This is my first time seeing people sells seafood like this! All spread out on the floor. Interesting.

We went in and walked a round but found nothing interesting to eat. Hence, we decided to walk out and look for restaurants beside Ham Tien Market. Simply find a decent restaurant and went inside for lunch.

I ordered a fried pho with seafood. It is really nice as there are lots of vegetables and the taste is something different from Malaysia-style fried noodles. 

After lunch, we went back to Diem Lien Guesthouse to rest. We spent too much time traveling around and our body need some rest. We were really lucky because when we were taking nap from 12-2pm, there's a heavy rain outside. When we were ready to go out and explore Phan Thiet Poshanu Cham Tower and Phan Thiet City, the rain stopped. (To be honest, I didn't know that there's a stormy rain when I was taking nap. It's my friend who told me. Really amazed by my sleep -- loud voice can't wake me up!)

At first, we wanted to take local bus to Phan Thiet but due to the hot sun, we decided to catch a cab. We requested the driver to stop us at Poshanu Cham Tower before heading to Phan Thiet City. Poshanu Cham Tower is located about 15km from Fairy Stream, nearer to Phan Thiet City as compared to Mui Ne.

Poshanu Towers are one of the most precious and important cultural vestiges of the Champa Kingdom. It was built in the late 8th century, which worships the Shiva Genie, who is highly respected by the Cham. Inside the main tower, there is an altar, on which a couple of Liga-Yoni, a symbol of the existence of the Shiva Genie, is worshipped. Besides these towers, there was once a temple, but it has been buried in the ground for more than 300 years. This group of tower templese was constructed using HoaLai art architecture -- one of the Champa Kingdom ancient art architectural manners. Poshanu Towers are among the oldest Champa towers that are not much damaged. (information from muine-explorer)

Poshanu Cham Towers (The 3 Towers)

Typical tourist photo

From the towers, there's a very nice view of the beach and sea.

If we weren't in a hurry, I would stand here and meditate a while. XD

There's also a huge GuanYinPuSa statue at the temple behind these towers. Didn't get to visit the temple and hence take a photo of the statue from the tower. Noticed it when I was in White Sand Dunes and finally it's in front of me! 

Spent about 10-15 minutes to take photos of the Towers and we quickly left the place. 

Why are we in such hurry? It is because our taxi driver is waiting for us and we were afraid that our taxi fare would go up too high. Luckily, the meter was paused when we went up to the towers. But unfortunately, we have communication problem with the driver. To me, language barrier is much a problem in Vietnam. The driver drove us back to our guesthouse instead of proceeding to Phan Thiet City. I realized too late and we have to pay for another trip to Phan Thiet city. Wasted!

What's there in Phan Thiet City? I'll talk about it in next post... =D Stay tuned!