A visit to the DMZ i will never forget...

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For those who are unaware what the DMZ is (as i was before visiting the place) it stands for De-Militerized Zone which is 1 of the most heavily bombed areas of Vietnam during the American War. I say American war as this what the Vietnamese call the Vietnam war. It makes sense i guess for them to call it the American War but takes a little getting used to.

Firstly i should explain that we had arrived in a small cafe in a small town, 15mins away from where the DMZ border is, for breakfast as we had been on the night bus to Hue and were not to far away from the city. As we were eating our breakfast the shop owner asked everyone on the bus if we would like to take a tour round the DMZ with him and he will drop us in Hue later. Immediately i turned suspicious of this offer as no where was this tour advertised in his cafe. However he had a number of visiter books that people had signed and left comments all recommending to 'Get Off The Bus' and take the tour. This was obviously legitimate as thousands of people had written in his books over the 15 years he had been running his tour. So we 'Got Off The (night) Bus' and did the tour, which was one of the best decisions we made in Vietnam!

Our first stop on the way to the DMZ was at a large cemetery which contained the remains of victims of the war. This was a daunting place especially when we realised that a funeral was taking place and we had entered the graveyard. This was horrible at first, it felt like we were imposing ourselves in a tour group looking like typical disrespectful tourists with cameras dangling from our necks and the tour guide just plowed on with his stories of the war and explainations of the various mass graves of victims with no papers so they couldn't be identified. Then things got even worse as various vietnamese starting walking up to us and taking photos of us looking at the graves and being at the burial. I felt like i was the killer who'd turned up at the funeral! Only then did the tour guide explained that a man had been searching for his brother's remains since the war, 40 years of searching, and today they had found him and buried him. Then the man himself who had just buried his brother came up to me and shook my hand. I was the only white male there and he took no notice of the other female members of our group which unfortunately is part of Vietnamese culture. He explained that this was his brothers military burial and that he was pleased i was here. All the time the flashes from the vietnamese cameras were going off. I felt like i should be asked to leave not be photographed like some kind of rockstar. However, this was when the tour guide explained they were pleased that a white western man was there as a visiter (as opposed to a soldier) and they want to be like me. This i took to mean he aspires to western standards which most books on Vietnam seem to agree with. I talked to him for a while and he asked me what i thought of his country and asked some questions about England. This was one of the most surreal moments of my trip so far.

As we arrived at the DMZ we saw immediately that some of the tunnels and trees the Vietnamese used to hide in and some of the weapons that was used by both the Vietnamese and the Americans were still in place like a kind of big outdoor museum of the war. The tunnels were built at 3 levels and they had lookouts on top, the kitchen could only be used when a mist was coming off the see so the steam from the boiling water wouldn't give them away. We went through the tunnels they used to hide and saw the conditions they used to live in. Some of the worst conditions was that they only had 1 toilet for everyone in there...up to 600 people living down there for 3 years! Babies were delivered underground and 6 year olds were handed guns. They say this was neccessary to survive. I can believe that.

Before leaving we met a man who was born in the tunnels, he had been hit by a bomb. He was stooped over, deaf and mentally disabled, yet he waved and tried to speak to us with a big smile on his face. He was pleased to see us. In many ways Vietnam is a strange country but no one can ever say they don't make the most out of everything life throws at them.

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Comments

[Longtime]

Thanks...
We're off to Vietnam at the end of the month and would like to visit sights like these through some morbid fascination of not forgetting history. Haven't heard from the pair of you for a while and hope yr well. Where's yr next destination?

[The World Wide Webber]

hey...
Hey how are you? we're fine and in Alice Springs Australia at the moment on the way up to Darwin. You'll love Viet Nam, make sure you barter everything down, even though everything is prety cheap you can save alot of money if you're there for a while. Where are you guys now?