Drove over the Hai Van Pass (a National Geographic ‘must do’ journey apparently) to DaNang and stopped at Marble Mountain. The surrounding village is full of skilled stonemasons and they carve incredible white & red marble statues. Here, you can tour a massive cave, used during the war as a Vietcong hospital & supply store – right under the nose of the US base in DaNang (who thought the locals were just bringing offerings to the deities in the cave).
The Cham people (a mix of Indonesian, Indian & Chinese) once ruled a substantial part of the region but were virtually wiped out by the Vietnamese in the 15th century. The Cham Museum in DaNang shows a history of their kingdom and some of their Hindu artifacts & architecture are on display. The two boob statues were fascinating; each with 365 tiny figures around the top and one statue had 28 breasts and the other 24. Hang explained that each figure represented a solar day and the two sets of boobs represented the shortest & longest female menstrual cycles.
So, depending on their cycle length, the women could work out their fertile days (whether for conception or contraceptive purposes we don’t know).
