Vietnam (Hue)

We got to Hue an hour late due to delays on the train. We were greeted by a man with my name on, bang on I thought and we don't have to walk to the hotel. As we walked to the car pack it quickly became apparent that there were two guys and two motor bikes! We put a hat on and jumped on the back, next thing we knew both of us were bombing it down the road on the back of a moter bike, not sure how safe it was and don't think the bike appreciated my weight plus back pack on the back but it was a great start to the Hue adventure. We ditched our bags at the hotel and headed out, it was nearly 40°c and the heat was killing us, we still haven't recovered from getting burnt in halong bay yet. We had afew jobs including booking a tour of the DMZ and some shopping. We looked at 4-5 different places and all the tours seemed average expect one which had a veteran from the war as your guide, it was the most expensive but from what we have read the guide makes the tour not necessarily the places you visit. We booked on for a full day out tomo and headed for the supermarket.

Hue on a night time has a very touristy feel with lots of bars and restaurants. Almost all bars had a happy hour on and in one case from 4-10pm which is more like a happy afternoon. The beer is cheaper and the food about the same as before, we both got a mojito for £1 and then a beer for about 40p which is rather cheap. To be honest we haven't eaten amazing food here other than a toasted sandwich we got from a cafe. The fact that the main street reminds us both of a low grade Spanish tourist strip might be a good reason the food isn't as good as the local stuff. The highlight of food in my opinion has been breakfast, we have a fridge in our room meaning ice cold milk and a box of honey nut loop like cereal, a refreshing and cheap change to breakfast for three days. The two small plastic bowls we brought have been rather useful in the end, cooking noodles and cereal a few times. DMZ tour A car arrived promptly at 7:30 to pick us up, yet again a man called Hung and a driver who didn't speak much English. Hung had fought with the south and Americans in the war and then spent 2.5 years in jail from 1975 as the communists locked him up and made him clear land mines by hand. He was knowledgeable and friendly but sometimes his English was not the sharpest. He says he still has problems from not fighting with the north in the war and says the country is still completely communist run and full of corrupt officials. One story he told was of an old American GI coming over and he gave him a tour before he was a proper guide, the next day the police turned up and took him to prison for two days worth of integration and in the end he had to pay them $1000 US dollar to be released. He mentioned they only get taught one side of the war story in schools and that they have elections every 4 years but only have one political party to vote for! His role was with special forces in the war and he would take them through the jungles and integrate Viet Cong prisons, he was stationed at the special forces base near Laos. We visited a famous camp on the front line where American soldiers lived and fought, he told stories of GI's as he called them going mad from the heat and massive amount of drug abuse that went on, heroin, cocaine, ganja etc. He said that because of this when the GI's returned from the front they would have weapons removed as sometimes they went crazy. He also said the the VC (viet cong) would sell cigarettes to the GI's laced with cocaine to make them go crazy on purpose! The troops also used to not take malaria tablets and get ill on purpose so they could have what he called an army holiday away from the front line in hospital. He always referred to the DMZ as hell! He often said things where 'fucked up' and called the VC 'mother fuckers', later on he stated that his English is completely learnt from soldier's and that he said he know only GI English which may explain the vocabulary. We visited a VC cemetery it reminded me of the cemeteries at Normandy with thousands of small white grave stones. Only 10% of the graves had names the rest read 'unknown hero', a large monument stood in the middle saying in Vietnamese 'never forgot our fallen heros'. He mentioned that people sometimes used animal bones to try to get money from the government claiming it was there fallen family member. The final part of our trip was down the Vinh Moc tunnels, basically an entire village moved underground for nearly 10 years due to the fighting above, they built 2km of tunnels on 3 levels below, 12m, 15m and 23m deep. We walk around a small museum above then got out our touches and went in. It was partially lit by small lights giving it a very eerie feel. The tunnels were about 5ft high and about as wide as me. Very interesting and weird, going down the slippery steep clay steps 23m to the lowest level you really got a sense of how big these tunnels were. Each tunnel had several small off shoots where a family would live. There was a doctor's, meeting room, weapons store etc. They were the most interesting part of the day trip. We have read more tunnels exist in Hoi Chi Minh city which are also good but were for fighting. Often the Viet Cong would use these tunnels to smuggle weapons from near by island and that almost all of their weapons were transported by push bike only and consisted of small arms and granade launchers. The bike trails peppered the countryside and where called the Hoi Chi Minh trails. I am still a little confused over Vietnamese people's feelings of Hoi Chi Minh and his revolution. I asked Hung and he said he was a good man but surely he was fighting against him, he always said the communists were the bad guys and still are, Hoi Chi Minh was a good man and helped the country a lot. My thoughts are that maybe he used the communists as simply a vehicle to reform and not always supporting their ideology, maybe they both used each other, I need to find out more! Brown Eyes We headed out on the town last night and went to a few bars. We started talking to a few American soldiers who were over here for 2 months clearing mines and training. We tagged along to a club called Brown Eyes, it was fun and a bit cheesy, we both ended up drunk. When we got back that night and in the morning we were both in hell! The liquor must have been dodgy and/or fake, we both threw up several times, morning and night, and felt rough most of the day. I did some research and found out fake dodgy liquor is endemic in Vietnam, they recommend you drink beer when can as its safe and usually okay. Next we have a sleeper bus to Hoi An, a small sleepy fishing village on the coast.