Mysterious adhesive material at Cham Pa towers

 Cham Pa is an ancient kingdom existed in Central Vietnam until being completely wiped out by Nguyen Dynasty in 19th century. 

"Banh it" towers 2021

Their relics now can still be seen in many provinces in the nation like Hue, Binh Thuan, Binh Dinh, Quang Nam. They are water well, statues and the most valuable architectures are religious towers for their rituals. 

What makes Cham Pa towers so special is the mysterious adhesive material using to connects bricks to build up the towers firmly standing for thousand of years. The gaps between bricks are so thin as if there is nothing and the whole wall is only one block.

Some people think that when being built, the bricklayers used unburnt bricks and used the adhesive mortar of the same material as the bricks then they bake the whole tower. This theory obviously is unpersuasive because a tower built with unburnt bricks can not bear such a whole heavy load.

Some people discover a possibility that the resin of  trees named "Dầu rái" which is locally available. The did experiment of restoration in some relics with this material and gained positive results. However we have to wait for a long time to see if this material is as good as the authentic one in the original towers.

I myself visited some famous Champa towers including Thap Doi in 2018 and Banh It in 2020. In some areas, the restoration is so clumsy that visitors can recognize at first sight because they don't want to misleading the visitors with what is original architect and what is restoration.

Quangngai, November, 28th, 2022