My Son Sanctuary from Hoi An or Da Nang: Tickets and Tips

My Son Sanctuary is a valley of ruined Cham brick temples about 35 to 40 km southwest of Hoi An, under an hour by road. Entry costs 150,000 dong for foreign visitors, about 6 US dollars, and the site opens at 06:00. Go early, allow three to four hours, and expect ruins, not an Angkor. Prices checked October 2026.

That last point decides whether the trip is worth it for you. Most of what stood here was bombed flat in 1969, and the people who come away disappointed are usually the ones who were sold a lost city.

My Son Sanctuary entrance fee and opening hours

The prices match the Da Nang city tourism guide to My Son. The ticket office is not at the temples. From the gate an electric shuttle carries you about 1.5 km up the valley, and it leaves when enough people are waiting rather than on a timetable. Walking it takes twenty minutes on a paved road. Some tour sellers still list a public holiday surcharge on top of the ticket, so check that if your date falls on Tet or a national holiday.

There is no formal dress code, unlike the active pagodas in Hue's temples and tombs. Wear shoes that grip on wet brick and bring a hat. There is very little shade between the groups.

How to get to My Son Sanctuary from Hoi An and Da Nang

Since the 2025 provincial merger, My Son sits inside the enlarged Da Nang city area, which is why some newer listings say "My Son, Da Nang". It has not moved. Hoi An is still the closest base.

From central Da Nang, allow 1 hour 15 minutes to 1 hour 30 minutes each way. A ride-hailing car will take you there, but a driver who waits for you is easier than finding a return ride from a valley with no town around it. Ask for a waiting price before you set off.

The riverboat return to Hoi An down the Thu Bon, offered by several tour companies, adds time but breaks up the drive. It is worth having if you are not in a hurry and the river is not in flood.

Is My Son Sanctuary worth visiting?

Yes, if you go knowing what is left. UNESCO listed the site in 1999 as the best surviving centre of the Champa kingdom's religious architecture, and that is the honest pitch: it is the most important Cham site in Vietnam, but it is a damaged one.

Most people spend 15 minutes in the museum, 15 minutes at the dance show and around two hours on foot among the temple groups. The towers that stand are small, a few metres to perhaps a two-storey house in height. The carving cut into the brick is the reason to come, and it rewards slow looking more than wide-angle photos.

E7 is one of the few towers in the valley you can see whole, roof and all. Photo: Chainwit., CC BY 4.0.

It suits people who like history and quiet, and it fits neatly into a few days around Hoi An. If you only have one free day there and ruins do not interest you, the Marble Mountains in Da Nang are closer and easier.

Cham history in two hundred words

The Cham were a Hindu kingdom that ruled the central coast of what is now Vietnam for more than a thousand years. Around 400 AD King Bhadravarman I built a shrine here to Shiva, worshipped as Bhadresvara, protector of the kings. The original was wood and burned. Its successors were brick.

Between the 4th and 13th centuries the valley filled with towers. When the French scholar Henri Parmentier surveyed it in 1899 he recorded the remains of 71 structures, and he named them by letter group, A to N, which is still how the signs label them.

Each course steps inward a few centimetres until the walls meet at the top. Photo: Gary Todd, CC0.

The towers are fired brick, and the carving was cut straight into the finished walls rather than moulded first. How the Cham bonded the bricks so tightly is still argued over. The only tower built of stone is B1.

The site sits in a closed valley roughly 2 km wide, ringed by hills. It was chosen as a sacred place, and that same shape made it a natural hideout in the twentieth century.

The bombing and the craters

During the American war My Son was a base area for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. In August 1969 US aircraft bombed the valley, and most of the architecture was destroyed in a single week. Tower A1, which French restorers had rebuilt in the late 1930s and which many considered the finest Cham monument anywhere, was left as a heap of bricks.

Some towers survive only as rubble, propped and roofed against the rain. Photo: shankar s., CC BY 2.0.

Bomb craters still pit the ground between the groups, now grassed over. Unexploded ordnance has been cleared around the main monuments, but not from every hillside, so stay on the marked paths. That is not a formality here.

Restoration has come in waves. A Polish team led by Kazimierz Kwiatkowski worked here from 1981, and the Archaeological Survey of India restored groups A, H and K between 2017 and 2022. Some scaffolding and protective roofs are part of the visit.

This pedestal once held the linga of A1, the tower the 1969 bombing reduced to a pile of bricks. Photo: Tycho, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sunrise or afternoon at My Son

Go at opening time. The reason is heat and people, not the sunrise itself. Hills surround the valley, so you will not see the sun come up over the towers, and "sunrise tour" mostly means you arrive around 06:00 to 06:30, before the tour buses.

The worst slot is 09:30 to 12:00, when the half-day tours from Hoi An all arrive together. Late afternoon is a fair second choice if you cannot face a 05:00 pickup, but leave time before the 17:00 ticket cutoff.

The valley is about 2 km across, closed in by hills on every side. Photo: Tycho, CC BY 3.0.

Visiting My Son in the rain

October and November are the wettest months on this coast. The site stays open, the paths are paved or packed earth, and mist on the hills suits the ruins. The problems are slippery brick, mud in the lower groups and the chance that heavy flooding on the Thu Bon cancels the boat return. Take a light raincoat rather than an umbrella, which is useless when you need your hands on a step.

Fitting My Son into a central Vietnam trip

A morning at My Son leaves the afternoon free for the old town, and our list of things to do in Hoi An covers the rest of the day. From Da Nang it pairs with the beaches and the bridges on the top things to do in Da Nang.

Most travellers then head north. The Hai Van Pass train from Da Nang to Hue is the best stretch of rail in the country, and our central Vietnam 5-day itinerary shows how My Son, Hue and Phong Nha fit in one week. If you are going straight on to the caves, getting from Hoi An to Phong Nha takes most of a day by bus or train.

Phong Nha is the opposite of My Son in one useful way: the landscape there is intact, and the caves are still being explored. A day on foot through the jungle to a river cave makes a good counterweight to a morning among ruins.