The Marble Mountains

This guide to the Marble Mountains near Da Nang opens with the fishermen's legend of a dragon egg splitting into five stone peaks, and follows how Emperor Minh Mang later named them the Five Element Mountains, building on centuries of Cham stone-carving here before any Buddhist monk arrived. Inside Huyen Khong cave it traces the seated Buddha lit by five shafts of daylight, and a Viet Cong commander named Phan Hiep who took shelter among the carvings in August 1968. Listen for how the cave's numbers keep circling back to five.