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Published: December 2nd 2006
The tunnel rat
Not built for western stature and was surprisingly warm inside.Ah ha, the bloggers are back. Seem to lagged so will try and catch up. We're in Hanoi now but you'll have to wait for that!
After the lovely town on Hoi An took a taxi up to Hue, the old Nyugen Dynasty capitol city. All ended here after the second world war when the monarchy fell and HCM took over. In its glorious days the city boasted a beautiful citadel with a stunning royal citadel within. This was however badly damaged by wars with France and then finished off by the fighting between the americans and the NVA. Today you only get a glimpse of its past beauty which is a shame. The weather was boiling and we have to confess to being a little travelweary hence didn't make too much effort. We did visit the ruins of the old citadel and a local Pagoda. We never bothered with the old Kings tombs which in hindsight was a mistake from what we subsequently heard.
After Hue we booked a DMZ tour. Unfortunately the bus tours were all full so we had to book a taxi and guide, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the
Khe Sanh Combat base
Kate posing inside the pretty poorly presented Khe Sanh reproduction. Could be alot better. car had working aircon, sped between the sites quicker, allowed us to stay and look at our leisure and got us back by 5pm. Our guide was a previous history graduate and full of knowledge. He even admitted to having got over his "brainwashing" by the government in early years and was fairly well travelled by Vietnamese standards.
The DMZ tour was interesting but needed a fair bit of imagination. All the sites bar the Vinh Moc tunnels were barren overgrown stretches of land long since cleared by the locals searching for scrap metal and building materials. A shame really. The government has made a fairly pitiful attempt at reconstructing some of the icons of the american war as it is always referred as. It was still interesting to see the terrain where alot of the fighting took place, from the hilltop artillery emplacements of the US to the tunnels of the Vinh Moc people, who against the odds survived underneath their bombed out village building an elaborate systems of tunnels. This was the highlight of the tour.
Its fair to say that the north outwitted the US/south vietnamese set up which only managed to cling on to
Cyclo tour around Hue
for some reason, Kate's cyclo driver didn't seem to struggle up the hills, not sure why! the border with immense aerial bombardment support.
With Kate thoroughly "warred-out" I agreed that more cheerful sites were needed so onto Hanoi we went by night train. We left at around 5pm sleeping 4 to a round in our soft sleep compartment. Overall it was quite comfortable(compared to the bus) but didn't make for a good nights sleep as we both woke during the night expecting to derail at any moment.
Sorry, seemed to have gone on a bit there so will commence the usual picture downloading nightmare. Cheerio for us both and until the next blog, lots of love Mark and Kate
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alice
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wurst
hello asian pair it sounds like you are back on track after the beach expreience, poor lambs, it sounds like a nightmare. funny enough we are in the town of Agadez in the beautiful Sahara and there are some germans in our hotel, they too seem very rude and cant even bother to speak a little french, one rolled up in the 100% Muslim town in hot pants holding a bottle of red wine, and he was a HE! very upsetting for our eyes, especially with all the sand! lots of love Alice and Christof x x