Nam - Part Deux

Having said goodbye to Chris we took a sleeper bus down the coast to Hue. When we got there it was rainy and grey - proper Glasgow weather! We had a bit of a walk round town to look at the old citadel, but the miserable weather meant we gave up on this after half an hour. That evening we caught up with Olli and Sammi from our Halong Bay cruise and went out for some drinks and pool.

The next day we all went on a day trip to the DMZ (demilitarised zone) which was the no man's land between North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. We got to see where some of the significant events happened during the war, and also got to explore the Vinh Moc tunnels. These were a huge network of underground tunnels built by the North Vietnamese to shelter them from the Americans, and included kitchens, nurseries and medical rooms. The tunnels stretched for around 2km on three levels and housed up to 300 people. We also saw the Khe San combat base and learned about the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The next day we headed down to Hoi An and crossed our fingers for some better weather. We were in luck - the sun was shining and Hoi An turned out to be a lovely little town, small and quaint with lots of art and craft shops. We had a meal by the river followed by drinks, finishing off with a trip to a beachside club. The next day we hired some bicycles and cycled to the beach for a day of chilling in the sunshine.

Next stop was Nha Trang. We'd heard that the beach wasn't in great condition after a recent typhoon, and unfortunately this was the case - the beach had branches and other debris on it, and it all looked a bit dirty. We did manage to find a pretty decent microbrewery by the beach, with its own swimming pool and sunloungers, so spent the next afternoon there.

After this I left the rest of the group and headed down to Ho Chi Minh City. Only had a short time here before heading to Cambodia, but managed to fit in a trip to the War Remnants museum which is a very interesting (though often pretty graphic) display of the kind of things that were going on during the war, including the use of the chemical Agent Orange which has caused a number of children to be born with deformities since the war.

The next day I took a trip to the Chu Chi tunnels just outside the city. This is another network of tunnels and trenches that were used by Viet Cong soldiers to hide from the Americans. The tunnels were very narrow and claustrophobic, and during the war were filled with booby traps and enemy snipers - can't have been much fun...

As an added bonus at the end of the trip I got to fire an AK47! There was a shooting range round the back so thought I'd give it a try, definitely gives a bit of an adrenaline rush to be firing that thing and it's properly loud - my ears were ringing by the end despite having worn ear protectors!

Nice little send off to Vietnam, now on to Cambodia...

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