Site of the Marine's "Rockpile" base during the war

Living quarters in the tunnels

In the tunnels

Day 11: The DMZ

In addition to its historical significance in terms of Buddhists monk protest and as an old capital city, Hue is also very near the DMZ and in fact played host to one of the bloodiest battles in the war. We booked a private tour guide through our hotel that we would pick up about an hour up the road. It’s important to note when we talk about riding in the car for hours. Its not as if, we hop in a van and drive 60 miles an hour on some highway. We are usually driving about 30 miles an hour (maybe less) on a road. Highways in the western sense don’t really exist here. So, the town in which we were going to pick up our guide was only about 15 -20 miles away. When our guide arrived we were initially a little unsure about how the day was going to go. He opened up our Lonely Planet book to the page which says that we can go to the DMZ bar and café (yes, my favorite bar) to get guided tours of the DMZ and emphatically stated, “Lies, all lies.” So, the DMZ guy must be taking some business from him. J He also showed us some pictures of some locals that were affected by agent orange. So, we started off sort of concerned. However, he turned out to be fantastic and very informative. He had done tours for various vets and could add some personal stories from them at certain points of the tour.

At the beginning of the tour, we basically follow Highway 9, which runs south of the DMZ and was home to a few key US Bases. The bases are mostly gone, replaced by some sort of farming. So, it was really nice to here the stories from the Vets. Some had even sent him pictures, including pictures of the bases during the war.

We took a brief stop at a “minority village.” This was nothing less than weird. Basically, we showed up at a village, where people were living and were told to walk around. Other than the fact that the we saw a woman smoking while breast feeding and witnessing total poverty, its unclear what the value was. I asked a girl if I could take a picture of her and she nodded yes and then bugged me for the rest of the visit for money. We frustratedly asked to leave early.

The end of the first part of the trip was a visit to the Khe Sanh memorial museum. This museum was basically put up do to the tourist demand to see the sight of one of the more famous battles of Vietnam. And, of course it was full of very thick propaganda. Khe Sanh was on the cover of Newsweek and Life as well as many other newspapers due a 75 day siege that occurred in 1968 and the fact that many people, including President Johnson predicted a massive battle similar to a French battle years earlier. President Johnson even had a mock up of Khe Sanh in the Whitehouse to follow the battle. According to our guidebook, it some think that Khe Sanh was merely a massive diversion, intended to attention away from South Vietnamese population centers in preparation for the Tet Offensive, which started a week after the siege began.

After a quick bite to eat (actually, it wasn’t super quick because my appetite is back and I actually ordered two crepes), we headed up to the DMZ. It was interesting to see the wartime bridge over the Ben Hai river. However, the highlight of the day was a visit to the Vinh Moc tunnels. Our guide said that the tunnels were built by the local people to protect them from bombing. While it is true that the locals lived and worked in the tunnels and that 17 babies were born there; our guidebooks said that they were used for military purposes. It was amazing to see how small they were and how little space was allocated for living (really about a 4 x 4 feet). On our way back our driver ran out of gas and had to hop a motorbike to get some more gas. Our tour guide was upset with him. So, we had to wait...outside. We were reminded to "watch out for landmines."

We headed back to Hue for a dinner at Tropical Garden, a cheesy, touristy restaurant. The highlight of the meal was when we asked for ice cream for dessert. The said they had two types: vanilla and chocolate. However, we were served a green and pink ice cream that turned out to taste more like pistachio and strawberry.

We finished off our stay in Hue with many beers at my favorite bar: the DMZ bar and café.