Hué:

March 9th, 2005 - March 11th, 2005

Greetings from Hue...

Following our stay in Hoi An, we continued on our open bus tour to Hue. Hue is near the 17th parallel where the former line between north and south Vietnam was drawn along the Ben Hai river. We chose to do a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) Tour on our first full day in town. It turned out to be a big waste of time.

We were picked up at 6am and travelled north for ever on the bus to the town of Dong Ha to eat breakfast (which was included in the cost). We then travelled even further - this time west down Hwy. 9 towards the Laos border and the town of Lao Bao. It had almost been 5 hours by the time we saw our first attraction - a former US Military base turned into a museum. It was brutal - only a few photos of the war; most of them without any context or sense of history.

Frankly, it was boring. By the 7 hour mark we were back in Dong Ha for lunch - having seen only the crappy museum and a section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail which is now complete with pavement and road lines as it has been made into a highway! Oh, we did see a minority Bru village - from the other side of the river! What a joke...

After lunch we finally went to see the "highlight" of our tour - the Vinh Moc Tunnels. At that point picking daisies would have been a highlight after nearly 9 hours in a bus of seeing nothing. The tunnel system was neat, but not worth all the pain and suffering on a decrepit old bus with a busted air conditioning system. The best part was, the driver kept yelling at people for opening the windows...

We left the tunnels and saw my highlight - the actual Ben Hai River that served as the divide of north and south Vietnam. There now stands an archway with a big sign in Vietnamese stating: "Long live Ho Chi Minh"!! He may be dead now, but his body is sitting in a preserved glass case in Hanoi which we will see when we get there.

Today we opted not to take a government organized tour and instead hired two local motorcycle guides at a local cafe to take us around town and to view the tombs of some of the rulers of the Ngyuen Dynasty.

The day started nicely with a ride through the countryside to view the Thanh Toan Bridge - it is one of only 4 such "Japanese" bridges in Vietnam. There are two in the south and two in the north; we saw the other one in the south when we were in Hoi An.

Our guide took us to a nice pagoda with a view of the Perfume River - so named because of all the flowers that villagers used to plant along the banks, giving it a nice smell. We had a short stop at the Royal Arena where the king used to sit and watch elephants fight tigers. The last such show was in 1904 - back then the tigers used to have their teeth removed so that the elephants would win as the elephant symbolized the "good" side and the good side always wins!

One of the highlights of the tour was learning how inscents and conical hats (the trademark Vietnamese bamboo hats) are made. The hats in Hue are made with an inner layer of bamboo, and then died newspaper cutouts are placed down followed by an outside layer of bamboo. When held up to the light, you can see the various shapes and designs embedded in the hats.

The best part of the whole tour was talking with our guide. He was a 1st Lieutenant for the South Vietnamese Army during the war. When the war ended he was sent to a re-education camp for 2.5 years.

He said it is very difficult for anyone who supported the south to get jobs now, especially with the government. That is why often the motorcycle drivers give the best tours because they were formally educated and give a balanced view to the history unlike those who run the government tours and only tell the story of the north which is dictated by communist rule.

Despite nearly 30 years since the war there still remains a strong divide in the country - those who are from the south still have a dislike for the north. But, since the country opened in the early 1990's things have began to improve for those who live in the south, especially economically. And nearly 70% of them are Buddhists and are allowed to practice freely again - this has changed their outlook on life according to our guide.

We were supposed to take a 14-hour overnight bus from Hue to Hanoi tonight, but in the end we opted for a flight. The risk of driving at night plus the likelihood of fog helped in that decision. We have 8 nights for Hanoi and area including the mountains of Sapa and the stunning Halong Bay. Then we are off to China for the final 5 weeks of our trip.

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