Marble Mountain Places To Stay

[Gabelo Camphire]

Builtover several levels around the mountain, this monastery is impressive in its beauty as well as its engineering. Pagodas, temples, burial tombs, and bridges over serene fish ponds alternate with caves holding altars and painted statuary. I spend two hours exploring every nook and cranny and descend via a different stairway that is much less steep than the one I ascended.

hi. barbra i was in vietnam in 69-70 all over nom . Hue the emperors palace ,a tile is missing from the floor where he use to give his speeches.I have a picture of myself sitting by his gold and jeweled chair.I was also in marble mountain and i took home two marble statues. thanks for some memories gary.

Barbara :

Pictures and thoughts were beautiful ! The pics of Vietnam were most interesting . I traveled the Hai Van

pass to Hue during the 68 Tet offensive and even in those days , you could still see the beauty . The country has recovered from the insults that were inflicted on her and the scenery is outstanding .

Thanks

Larry

Hi,

Thanks for the elaborate details on marble mountains.

Would you recommend we make a trip to these mountains with a 2 year old, directly from danang airport upon arrival mid-morning? We are then heading to Hoi-An, for a 3 night stay.

Alternatively, we have plans to visit Bana Hills too one of the days. Not sure if we directly go to bana hills or marble mountains from the airport.

Hi, this sounds great much prefer doing our own thing o the tourist hoards. What stop is it on the bus route? What direction do you go when you get off the bus? Do you go back to the same bus stop to return to the city? thanks

The Marble Mountains Vietnam, just 15 km north of Hoi An are a magical-looking place with gateways leading into the sides of mountains, and little houses and shrines ensconced in cool grottos. The road leading there from Hoi An is wide and paved, which makes it an incredibly easy motorbike ride away.

The Marble Mountains are made up of five towering limestone peaks, each one named after one of the elements. The largest, Thuy Son (Water Mountain), has the highest concentration of pagodas and natural caves and each grotto is full of sculptures and beautiful carvings.

Thuy Son is very large and you need at least a couple of hours to explore it. We were there for 3 hours, and sped through a lot of it. We should have packed a lunch to be able to stay and enjoy it at a more leisurely pace. The interior of the mountain is full of marble that has been extracted and made into statues (mostly of Buddhas), as well as carvings done right in to the walls.

There is a 15,000 vnd charge to enter Hell Cave, and a 15,000 vnd charge for the rest of Thuy Son. The rest of the area is free and open to the public. There are a lot of stairs to get to the top of the mountain, and a lot of walking once you are up there, so make sure your shoes are comfortable! There is a lot to see and it can get rather confusing when walking from cave to pagoda to cave again so this map is quite helpful when exploring.

While visiting family in Arizona and California I was able to figure out where the Marble Mountains trilobite quarry was located. It's not that far off the road system so I figured I'd give it a look see on my drive from central Arizona to Northern California. The location is only about 25 miles out of my way so why not. On my drive north I only had a few hours so this stop was mostly a fact finding trip.

Ok, word of notice...... I DO NOT recommend driving a mustang here. I know my car and have driven many places I shouldn't hehehe. I had to stop about 1/4 mile from the site. Don't need a 4x4 but a little ground clearance is a big help. The road is a bit rocky but that is to be expected. It's about 1.5 miles from pavement to parking area.

I arrived just before sunset and found some locals already at the site (you can just make out their truck in middle photo). They gave me some pointers on what to look for as they were leaving and I set to work. For the first hour I was mostly just wondering around seeing what I could see. There were no obvious recent diggings so I was gonna have to do some digging myself. Went back to the car, grabbed a headlight and went to search in the dark. After about 3 hours I packed up and left to continue my drive north.

5 days later I was on my way south back to Arizona. I stopped for a full day of digging this time. Kinda got the basics of the site during this stop. Then back on my way. A week later I was able to slip away for a full 3 day trip just to dig. I was able to spend some quality time on site. It is not a site that you can really hit well in a short time.

Lets talk rock. The main fossil layer is the Latham Shale which is overlaid by the Chambless Limestone. The Latham is lower (early) Cambrian in age. The shale is covered with feet of overburden. It is also very weathered. The first 1-2 feet of bedded shale is pretty much shattered and useless. So, after removing the overburden and lots of shattered shale you finally start to find the layers that are worth trying to split. The rock is a mix of shale with some bedded planes and not. And it tends to fracture at odd angles. Also it has lots of cracks so hard to find big slabs to split (bring lots of glue and clamps)

Once on site, pick a spot to to dig! There is broken shale everywhere hiding the actual shale beds. Once you commit to a spot then it's time to work. You have between 2-4 feet of loose overburden to move

Once the overburden is gone (took about an hour to clear an area down 2 feet x 4 feet) then clear off the worst of the shattered shale. Only then can you hope to find pieces big enough to pull off and split that might have a whole cephalon.

I used to have a Kia Rio that would go almost anywhere. I took that thing places even my 4x4 SUV won't go. I bet a person could start a whole new topic on this subject (but why do that when we can just high jack this one). Thanks for the setup @Sjfriend, can't wait to see how it ends. Lovely scenery by the way.

So, the fossils to follow were found over the 3 different stops at this locale. Most of course on the last 3 day stop. Due to my limited time on site I actually hunted well past dark each visit. For a reference to the abundance of specimens, when I got back to Arizona and cleaned / trimmed the rock I brought back I filled a large flat rate box with what I was taking home. Took them home on my flights home. 28 pounds of rock in my carry on bag. The TSA security screening folks were quite perplexed but after a couple minutes let it pass (thank goodness!)

I mentioned in the previous post that you should bring glue and clamps. In one of my digging hole photos you can see a couple pieces that are already glued and clamped. I glued most of the ones that were damaged when split (most of them). The usual damage is little pieces of shell and the eyes sticking to the split rock. This way I didn't have to worry so much about transporting them. After my first trip I bought a bunch of the little clamps to be ready for my longer visit.

Here is a view of my hole. You can see a couple clamped pieces next to the bucket as well as the glue, foil and blue towels used to protect the finds. You can really see how fractured the rock is. Made it a real pain trying to find / pull out any larger pieces. It was amazing how almost every decent larger cephalon was split by a crack or 3!

99.9% of what you'll find is cephalons and individual thorax pieces. There are a couple things I found online that were used to explain this, 1: the shells were very thin and weakly held together so once the trilobite shed it quickly fell apart. 2: This area had a decent current that tore them apart quickly.

Here is an example of how big the trilobites could get and why I hated how fractured that rock is. Olenellus ? cephalon that would have been around 11cm wide! This photo is when the piece was just exposed before I tried (and failed) to remove it in one piece.

Mesconacis fremonti, This is part of a large slab (have both sides) with multiple cephalons, if I recall there are 9 or 10. My complaint is they are very mixed, positive and negative on each side. So, don't see trying to glue and prep them onto one side being worth the effort.

Thanks for the report. While looking at all your pictures It looked very familiar. I think I have two pieces of that rock sittin here on my desk. I was trying to remember where I got them and only new I was somewhere in california not too far off of old root 66?

One of the other fossils at the site come from the Chambless Limestone just above the Latham Shale. It is a cyanobactarial fossil, saw both Girvanella and Oncolites listed online as names?? I was worried that it might take a while to find what I was looking for. Ended up taking about an hour....... to find the right size and detailed piece to take home. Kinda hard to miss the fossils in the formation. 1st photo, not what I took home but a lovely piece. 2nd photo is one I kept. I did keep a 2nd to try something on. the limestone is very hard and some of the fossils have great ring structure so I wondered what it would do cut and polished. It cut well, I just have to get it polished up to see the final results.

Yes, I have also taken Ford Escorts and a Ford Tempo places that I probably shouldn't. But hey, when your young and brave (ok, really that means young and dumb!) where is the fun in staying within the lines? I do love the looks you get when you pass a big 4x4 in your little car On the last 1/2 mile to the spot I parked I did hit bottom a couple time but nothing hard.

Though on my 2nd stop I had to leave in the dark and missed my turn. Ended up in a sandy wash, oh was that a scare! Kept the gas down and prayed as I tried to just get across and out. I made it! Then got out and spent almost an hour finding a way back across. Had to do a little digging, laid down the floor mats and a couple pieces of wood in the sand but made it. Is it really a fun trip if there isn't some sort of adventure?

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