DMZ and Hue

It was nice to get out of Hanoi. What got to me was the HORNS that everyone feels they must beep and toot every 5 seconds, for no apparent reason. It really gets on ones nerves after a while. Court was getting totally sick of the vendors, who can sometimes get quite push about trying to sell stuff to you. They won't take a "no thanks", they insist on keep trying. The kids and people selling the travel books are the absolute worst. They think they can sell you stuff by striking up a conversation with you before trying a sales pitch.

Anyway, kind of slept on the bus last night, but not much. The bus stopped at Dong Ha at 7:00 for breakfast, and while there, a tour guide was trying to round up people for a DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone) motorbike tour. Anyone interested would have to get off the bus here, then take a local bus to Hue, 2 hours away later on. After much humming and hawing, I decided to do it, along with 5 others. Court and Dana didn't. Court said she's e-mail me when they got a place to stay in Hue, so I could catch up with them.

The tour was $15US, and I was going to go to Hue after the tour, by local bus (20,000 dong). The other 5 decided to stay in Dong Ha that night, so because I had to catch another bus that day, the one guide decided to take me and do the tour early. So, I got my own personal tour guide, just him and I, as we darted around the countryside on a motorbike. He showed me rubber trees (condom trees, Vietnamese call them), they the Contein bunker (American bunker on a hill, near the DMZ zone), then the National cemetery, which has the graves of 10,543 North Vietnamese fighters that died in the war. There are more than 70 other grave sights. This was a nice cemetery, with some very nice stone and marble monuments in memory of them. Very nice, comparable to the cemeteries I saw in Europe for WW1 and WW2. Also saw the Ho Chi Minh Trail (well, saw one part of the many trails that spread around Vietnam). The Vietnamese gov't is now widening and paving one of the Ho Chi Minh trails, so tour buses can drive along it. During the way, the Ho Chi Minh trail was used by North Vietnamese fighters to get food and weapons into southern Vietnam, to their supports down there. It was very narrow, only a bike could fit on it, so as not to be discovered my the Americans and the south. Yay for tourism! He took me to the one and only bridge that connected North and South Vietnam before the war, and after the Americans came in, they bombed the bridge to smithereens. All over the DMZ are huge bomb craters, dropped by American planes. Before the Americans bombed the bridge, the bridge had a two metre section right at the middle that was cut out. So, if a person from the north and a person from the south wanted to talk, they could each go onto bridge, and talk to each, but could not cross. Right next to where the bridge used to be, is another bridge for the highway. The Vietnamese gov't is now in the process of rebuilding the original bridge (to look like it originally did), and it's strictly going to be for tourism reasons...no vehicles will be driving on it. We went to the Ving Moc Tunnels, apparently the best preserved VC (Viet Cong) tunnels in all of Vietnam. Then we went for lunch, then stopped at an old M41 tank leftover from the war. Most of it has been stripped of everything but the shell now. All this was done on a motorbike, and took about 6 hours.

My driver then took me to the bus station, and got me on the 2:00 bus to Hue. It was a minibus, and there were 21 people packed on the bus, I was the only foreigner, everyone else was locals.

2 hour bus ride to Hue, then walked across the bridge to the guest house district, and found and internet, and there was no e-mail from Court. I ran into another girl in the internet that was on the same bus as Court and Dana, and she said the internet was down most of the day. So, I asked if could keep my bag at the internet place, they said it was problem, so I walked around for a while, then checked my e-mail again at 5:45, still no e-mail, so I went for supper, and walked around, and vegged, then about 7:00, I went back to internet and there was an e-mail Court, so I walked to the hotel, and Court and Dana had booked a room for two, because they didn't know when I was coming back, so I had to book a room for myself. I got a room with 3 single beds for $5.00. Court and Dana's room was 2 single beds, they were paying $6 ($3 each).

I showered, then booked a river tour (Court and Dana had booked it earlier) for $1.50US. Then we all went to an expensive place for ice coffee and pop, ditched there after one, and found a small restaurant, run by a nice woman, who advertised the best fruit shakes in Hue.. They were cheap too (5000 dong), so we got one, and it was awesome. We played cards, and each ordered a 2nd shake. The to bed.

Court and Dana took a 1-hour cyclo tour of the old city today, while I was in Dong Ha.