DMZ tour

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For no good reason, I suffered a terrible night’s sleep and, as has been customary for weeks, I woke up around 5:15. I would have to get up at 5:40 to make it downstairs in time for my tour so getting back to sleep proved worthless. I got ready and Barbara and I made our way downstairs to meet our guide. Before embarking on the actual tour, we received a complimentary breakfast at the tour agency’s restaurant.

After more than an hour’s drive, we reached our first stopping point - Lu Cau Post. Overlooking the surrounding hills, we learned that this are was a US Marine stronghold used for observation and the distribution of supplies. Today it’s merely a very pleasant mountain scene.

Our next stop was at an “Ethnic Minority Village”. It was meant to be an opportunity for us all to get out and snap photos of the locals. Barbara and I had talked last night about how strange it must feel for the locals here to have a bunch of tourists show up daily to take their picture. Yesterday, she had likened this type of thing to having a bunch of people you’ve never seen before coming to your hometown in the middle of nowhere and snapping photos of you doing everyday things like going to work or cooking dinner. I agreed.

In any event, the more interesting part of this stop was the scenery. A bunch of us stood along a bridge and watched a river run underneath us, thinking it would be great for kayaking.

Subsequently, we went to Ke Sahn Combat Base and toured a museum on the premises. Inside there were more photos showing the heroics of the VC, including several of the women fighters. There were also numerous ones showing captured Americans. I wonder why they didn’t show what happened to the Americans after the pictures were taken?

After that, we drove to Dakrong Bridge. Whatever was the purpose of this bridge was lost on me. I spent my time there fending off requests for money from local children and observing two characters below. They were running a hose line from what looked like a home - well, some dilapidated building at the very least - down to the river. They then applied a long rod to the end and I imagine would place it in the water. We left before I had a chance to see the finished product. One thing is for certain: they either planned to use the device to draw water from the river or place substances from the building into the river. While the river looked very clean, my money is on the latter.

We had a brief break for lunch and continued our tour in the afternoon by going over the Ben Hai River via the Hien Luong Bridge. The river is what geographically separated North and South Vietnam. On either side were the remains of several signs of superiority left for the other side to observe the will of the opposition.

Our final stop was at the Vinh Moc tunnels. Having seen the ones in Cu Chi a few days ago, this lacked the luster that it otherwise might have, though it was interesting to see how much larger these were. When we toured them I could almost stand erect, whereas in Cu Chi it was necessary to crawl on hands and knees at times. Also of note was the huge crater left by a bomb that exploded inside one of the tunnel’s air vents.

Overall, the tour was lacking. Some of it had to be because I was really tired. But I also couldn’t understand the guide well with his heavily accented English and his continuous in depth approach of describing things, more as if he were writing a book than addressing a group of tourists. The day consisted of a lot of driving with only a few stops where, for the most part, the attraction was what once occurred there. I have to admit that my Normandy tour was a bit similar on the latter but perhaps with my better understanding of the events that occurred there I could envision and appreciate things better.

The highlight of the day certainly wasn’t the tour itself but the sideshows. One was a group of three German speakers in their 50s that sat behind us on the tour bus. Judging by the accents, two, a husband and wife, were from Switzerland and one was a solo traveler from eastern Germany. As they talked about various subjects behind us, they didn’t realize that Barbara is German and could understand everything they were saying. Of course she felt no need to tell them her background, instead allowing us to have a good laugh.

Throughout the day I could see her giggling as they talked. One time in the afternoon I passed her my notepad with a “?” on it. She wrote back, “They’re talking about sending emails - and they clearly have no clue what to do. One of them didn’t know you had to go to your Hotmail account first, login and then send the mail. They think you need some kind of username.”

Later, she wrote, “He just realized that your name appears as “sender” whereas the recipient has a DIFFERENT email address. So he apparently tried to email his wife but sent the message to his own account - and was surprised his mail never reached her.”

My response, also on paper, was, “I wonder how he sends normal mail.”

Another conversation, which occurred outside the van while the wife was not around, had something to do with the men’s promiscuous activities years ago with the region’s female natives. Barbara had grown disturbed by this and walked away so that was all she caught. The lesson? A foreign language is not a code.

The other, and surely more memorable highlight, was our insane tour bus driver. The guy sped and changed lanes haphazardly throughout they day. It does seem a bit customary to do that here; however, when we stopped along a roadside and were greeted by a Vietnamese police officer, we realized that customary and legal are still two separate things. We all laughed as we watched our guy walk back with the officer and hoped that this might calm him down. I later asked our tour guide if this was included in the cost of the tour or whether we would have to pay for it separately like drinks. He didn’t get the joke and wasn’t amused.

Later on, as the driver continued his rampage, the Germans behind us got really upset and shouted at him. Something tells me that an eastern German yelling at you in a foreign language that you don’t understand will, if anything, exacerbate the situation.

On our way back from our lunch break, Barbara and I were walking across a parking lot at the exact time we were told to be back. I told her it looks like everyone’s on board and Michael Schumacher is sitting there revving the engine.

The final driving highlight actually wasn’t our driver’s fault. As we were approaching a checkpoint, we almost were run over by an oncoming tractor trailer who found it necessary to recklessly pass another truck by use of our lane. Our driver slowed and the tractor trailer cut in front of the truck he passed, missing us by only a few feet.

Somehow, we made it back safely. I went up to the room for a bit and ended up meeting a new roommate, Chris, an Australian who is part of a motorbike trip from Hanoi to Saigon. After talking with Chris for a bit, I went down to the bar to use the Internet and have a free happy hour beer, courtesy of the hostel. Barbara came down shortly thereafter and was talking with a couple other guys at the next table. Both named Tom, it turned out that they were on Chris’s trip, too, and were also new roommates. Barbara and I left to have dinner at an Indian restaurant and, afterwards, ended up hanging out with them throughout the evening.

We had a few rounds at the hostel bar before heading to another bar a few blocks away. When we left I knew I only had one or two drinks in me, still exhausted from a virtually sleepless night. I made it through one more beer before calling it a night and heading back to bed.

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Photos

River
A river that runs past the ethnic village.

Busted
Our driver has a chat with the Vietnamese police.

Photos
Photos of the North Vietnamese living in the tunnels.

Workers
Two guys hooking up a long hose from their home to the river. The water looked clean but I wondered if they intended to keep it that way.

Crater
Hole from a bomb that took out one of the tunnel's airvents.

Tunnel
This one was much higher than those in Cu Chi.