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Published: July 29th 2006
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No sooner had I fallen asleep, blind drunk, than I was woken by Deano in a panic as our bus was leaving in 15 minutes. Hauled myself out of bed and stumbled around the room, still pissed, trying to pack my things. Managed to catch it and proceeded to speak drunken gibberish to some poor Vietnamese guy sitting next to me. While I was ranting on about the lack of legroom and how the buses over here are built for the Vietnamese not us Westerners, he was looking at me blankly, obviously with no idea what the hell I was talking about!
The bus journey was supposed to be 4 hours, so we were all looking forward to quite an easy ride. Unfortunately when we stopped for lunch our bus had a puncture so we were left sitting around for about an hour in the blistering heat, with the lord of all hangovers. By the time we arrived in Hue, I had a right strop on and didn’t really want to do anything except sleep. Managed to drag myself to the tour office to book a tour of the De-Militarised Zone and our bus to Hanoi the following day. Due
to my seriously short temper and thumping head, I probably would have ended up snapping at the wrong person in the street so didn’t spend much time looking around Hue and had an early night.
The DMZ is around 2 hour’s drive from Hue so we arranged to do the tour, then be dropped off further up the coast and catch the bus to Hanoi from there. This meant that we knocked 2 hours of the journey to Hanoi and saved wasting a day waiting around for another bus the following night. The tour bus picked us up at around 6am. After an hour and a half, we arrived at the DMZ. The landscape was quite interesting; all of a sudden either side of the road opened up into rice paddies as far as the eye could see. The perfect green was occasionally blemished with what looked like ponds. These are actually bomb craters from all the years of fighting.
The DMZ stretches for around 5 km either side of the Ben Hai River. This river is the official border between the North and the South of Vietnam. It is quite interesting how petty it used to get
between the two regions. The North would paint the bridge one colour, then the South would re-paint it another. This continued back and forth until they agreed to actually divide the bridge and paint each respective half their preferred colour. Other ways in which they would compete were: building and rebuilding flag towers in order for them to be higher than their adversary’s, or have speaker wars across the river, blasting out derogatory messages, music or propaganda!
When we crossed the border we were told that we could have a very quick 5 minute stop to take a few pictures. 1 ½ hours later we were still sitting on the side of the road as the bus wouldn't start. As interesting as it was, unfortunately there is only so many times that you can look at a river, a bridge and a flag tower before becoming slightly bored. A mechanic arrived on a moped with a couple of spanners and a pair of pliers up his sleeve and proceeded to climb inside the engine bay to fix it. At this point we were becoming quite worried as there was a large puddle of what smelt like petrol on
the floor!
We finally set off once again and made our way to the Vinh Moc Tunnels. The tunnel complex covers an area of around 1 square kilometre. All of the tunnels were dug by hand and at their deepest point reach 30m underground. They were not just used to hide in, this place was actually used as an underground settlement. There were bedrooms, a meeting room, even a maternity ward where 17 babies were born! All of these rooms were literally caves dug out of the side of the tunnel. They must have been a seriously resilient bunch to live down there all that time! We covered about 500 metres underground and were sweating like troopers by the end of it. We exited the tunnels onto a beautiful beach with the fresh air and sun hitting our faces. I can imagine this almost being like torture for the inhabitants. Having to stay in a dark, damp, dingy tunnel when this beautiful landscape was just outside.
We boarded the bus and were shipped off to our next stop which followed the Ho Chi Minh trail to an abandoned US military base. The base was originally set up to
monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail and was besieged by North Vietnamese forces. A long and quite fierce battle commenced. A Museum has now been erected in commemoration. We were becoming more and more childish as the day went on so had some great fun clambering around on tanks and in and out of bunkers.
The tour ended and we were taken to a restaurant where we would wait for the bus to pick us up for Hanoi. As mentioned earlier, we were quite pleased that the journey would be 10 hours instead of 12, especially as we felt like we had spent all day on buses after driving around on the tour.
The bus arrived in reasonable time, we set off and I was happy with a surprisingly comfortable seat. Just dozed off, but was rudely awakened by the non-English speaking bus driver who slapped me on the shoulder. I woke up startled and in a daze to a strange face blabbering at me in an even stranger language whilst gesturing up to the back of the bus. After I had overcome the initial confusion I realised that he wanted me to move seats to make way
for some random Vietnamese girl. Still slightly dazed and confused, I tried to argue, but got nowhere due to the language barrier, therefore ended up giving in and moving seat. In hindsight I should have told the cheeky bastard to kiss my big hairy bollocks, as I ended up squashed in the back corner of the bus next to a large, quite drunk Northerner. Oh, and to top it all off, my seat was the only seat on the whole bus that didn’t recline!
I managed to doze off again, but was woken after about an hour by the bus stopping for a snack. We noticed the driver looking under the bonnet, but didn’t pay too much attention. We continued on and the fag, piss and snack stops became more and more frequent until the bus actually broke down. We were in some remote town, at 1.30am where there was absolutely no sign of life, and ended up staying there for another 6 ½ hours. After faffing around with the engine for a couple of hours, the bus driver jumped on a moped and pissed off without telling anyone anything at all, leaving us sleeping on the pavement at
the mercy of mosquitoes and red ants (believe it or not it was actually more comfortable than the bus, which was quickly becoming a large, mobile oven what with the air conditioning being off).
Eventually at 8am, the bus was fixed and we set off again for Hanoi. We arrived there at around 2pm after a 20 hour journey. This would not have been quite as bad had we not already spent the whole day on a bus amounting to a grand total of 32 hours!
To top the whole farcical journey off, we were dropped on the outskirts of town and told that we would have to pay for a taxi to our hotel. After hearing this I was livid as you can imagine. The only problem was that there was no-one to complain to. It’s amazing how when you want to buy something everyone speaks fluent English, but as soon as you want to make a complaint their language skills deteriorate rapidly. With my complaints falling onto deaf ears, we decided to let it go and catch a taxi to the Old Quarter.
The old Quarter of Hanoi is set around Hoan Kiem Lake and
is where you’ll find most of the budget accommodation in the city. We checked into the Hanoi Spirit Hotel, and found a decent bar to sit down, have a nice cold beer and reflect on the horrendous past day. It’s a shame really as I thoroughly enjoyed South Vietnam, but it seems that as soon as we crossed the border into the north we have had nothing but nightmares. We really have set off on the wrong foot and I genuinely hope that Hanoi and Halong Bay brings us round.
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A.Jane
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The Best
Dear Pete, I know you have sent some fantastic pictures, but the last one here of you saluting is the best ever! Please send me a copy you look ridiculous! The conclusion I have come to is I'll take my gap year when I can do it in style, sweaty arses, 32 hour bus journeys, molestation by undesirables just don't do it for me! Continue having fun, lots of love A.Jane xxxxxxxxxxxxx