Visiting Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary: what the management board's own pages say

What Mỹ Sơn is, and who runs it

Mỹ Sơn is a closed valley of ruined temple towers built by the kings of Champa. Its management board describes more than 70 brick structures raised over nine centuries, from the 4th to the 13th, and says UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List on 4 December 1999, at the committee session in Marrakech.[1] The board's statement of the site's Outstanding Universal Value counts 13 groups of buildings, named by letter from A to M.[3]

The site is run by its own heritage board, the Ban Quản lý Di sản Văn hóa thế giới Mỹ Sơn, which publishes two websites: mysonsanctuary.com.vn for information and mysonticketonline.vn for online tickets.[11][1] Everything below comes from those two sites as they read on 11 October 2026, attributed page by page, because several of the pages disagree with each other.

For the civilisation behind the towers, see Champa and the Cham towers explained.

Where it is: not in Hội An

Mỹ Sơn is a separate place, not part of Hội An. The board's current pages give the address as Mỹ Sơn hamlet, Thu Bồn commune, Đà Nẵng city.[1] Older pages on the same sites still use the earlier units: the statement of Outstanding Universal Value places the site in Duy Xuyên district, Quảng Nam province, and the ticket shop's privacy section gives the board's own address as Duy Phú commune, Duy Xuyên district, Quảng Nam province.[12][3] Both describe the same valley under the administrative units in force when each page was written; for how Vietnam's 2025 reorganisation renamed units like these, see Vietnam's 2025 province mergers and place names.

The board's "About us" page gives Mỹ Sơn's distance as 45 km from the Hội An ancient town and 68 km from the city of Đà Nẵng, and the ticket shop's home page says about 69 km from the city centre.[13][1] Neither page says whether these are road or straight-line distances, and XTOUR gives no travel time. XTOUR's reading is that Hội An or Đà Nẵng is the base a visitor sleeps in and Mỹ Sơn is a separate trip out; for choosing between those two bases, see Hội An or Đà Nẵng as a base.

What the site looks like on the ground

The board describes the valley as about 2 km across, enclosed by mountains, with a stream running north to the Thu Bồn river.[2] Its architecture page says each group is built around a main sanctuary tower inside a brick wall;[4] the plan of a group and the sequence of Cham styles the valley holds are explained, from the same page, in Champa and the Cham towers explained.

What survives is a ruin. The board's statement says many towers were destroyed in the Second World War and the two Indochina wars, and that heavy rain, flash floods and high humidity are a continuing conservation problem.[3]

Before the towers, the board points visitors to the Mỹ Sơn Museum, beside the Khe Thẻ stream about 2 km north-west of the monument area, built in 2004 and 2005 with a grant from the Government of Japan to give an overview before the visit.[5] According to the My Son Sanctuary board's ticket shop, a fleet of 12 electric vehicles of 6 to 14 seats carries visitors along a 2 km road to the relic area.[13]

The ticket: what it includes

The board's visitor page of 29 June 2020 is the one that says what the entry ticket covers: the Mỹ Sơn Museum, the electric shuttle, the Cham folk performance and the site itself. It lists three prices: 100,000 VND for domestic visitors, 150,000 VND for international visitors and 30,000 VND for children aged 5 to 15.[8] The board's older price notice, dated 1 January 2019, gives 150,000 VND for foreign and 100,000 VND for Vietnamese visitors, "including the visit fee and services".[6]

The ticket shop's information page repeats 150,000 and 100,000 VND, calls the 30,000 VND ticket a "service ticket" bought for children aged 5 to 15 as a shuttle fare, and says children under 5 go free. The same page warns that prices may change and that the price shown on the purchase page is the one that applies.[12] On 11 October 2026 that purchase page showed 148,000 VND for foreign visitors and 99,000 VND for Vietnamese citizens.[11]

The shop's terms say tickets bought online cannot be refunded or transferred, are valid up to the visit date chosen, and cannot yet be cancelled or changed once paid.[12] For groups, the shop can issue one QR code per ticket type instead of one per person.[11]

XTOUR does not know why the purchase page is lower than every published notice, or whether the gate charges the same amount.

Hours: three board pages, three answers

The board's pages do not agree on when the site closes. The hours notice dated 1 January 2019 says the site is open every day including public holidays, from 06:00 to 17:00 in both summer and winter.[7] The visitor guide of 29 June 2020 says visiting runs from 6:00 to 18:00 and ticket sales from 6:00 to 17:00, with the museum open from 6:00 to 17:00.[8] The ticket shop's information page says ticket sales run from 06:00 to 17:30 and visiting from 06:00 to 18:00.[12]

XTOUR does not state a closing time, because it cannot tell which of these pages the board now applies.

The Cham performances

The performances are part of the ticket and run on a published timetable.[8] The board's hours notice lists shows in the performance hall at 09:45, 10:30, 11:15, 14:00 and 16:00, with the last marked as adjusted, and says the board will post a notice when a show is cancelled. The same notice lists outdoor performances at the foot of tower group G at 9:00 and 14:45, a "Cham Folk Singing" programme on the slope of group H on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:00 and 14:45, and a programme called "Echoes of My Son" (Âm Vang Mỹ Sơn) on the 15th of every month by the solar calendar, not the lunar one, at the B, C and D groups, also at 9:00 and 14:45.[7] The 2020 visitor guide adds that the folk singing and the group G performance stop in bad weather.[8]

The ticket shop's home page also advertises a Cham pottery demonstration and gives no schedule for it.[13] How the shop's description of the technique sits beside UNESCO's account of the listed Chăm craft is set out in Champa and the Cham towers explained.

Guides

The board sells on-site guiding by the "guide ticket". Its notice of 20 January 2026 sets a maximum of 30 people per guided group, keeps the guide ticket at 100,000 VND, and charges one ticket for 1 to 5 visitors, two for 6 to 15 and three for 16 to 30, for a standard route of about 60 minutes, from 1 February 2026. Longer or specialist tours are charged extra tickets on demand.[9] The ticket shop also advertises a multilingual audio guide, without a price on the page XTOUR read.[13]

Rules the board publishes

The board's rules page says no vehicle may enter the relic area, everyone must buy and show a ticket, and nobody may climb on, write on or move artefacts and towers.[10] The ticket shop's version of the rules asks visitors to dress modestly and avoid short or revealing clothes, not to eat in the relic area, and to take photographs without flash; filming or photography for commercial purposes needs permission.[12]

What XTOUR does not know

• Which price and which closing time are current at the gate. The pages above are all live and disagree.
• Accessibility of the shuttle, the paths between tower groups and the museum. None of the pages read describes it.
• Travel time from Hội An or Đà Nẵng, and how visitors get there. The board gives distances only, and XTOUR holds no routing data.
• Whether any tower group is shut for restoration on a given day; XTOUR does not know.
• Crowd levels at any time of day or year.

The ticket, hours and performance details above are dated on their pages between 2019 and 2026 and were read on 11 October 2026; check the board's two sites before you go.