The DMZ

Day 362
We were up at 6am to be ready for our very early morning tour. Hue is best place to visit some of the more interesting Vietnam war sites from. It does make for a very long day though and I could hardly keep my eyes open any time that we were on the bus.

Our first stop was a mountain that had been used as a look out by the Americans who also called it the rock pile. Instead of being barren as it was back then, it is now covered in trees and nearly impossible to climb. After the photo opt we headed to the former American Khe Sahn base. There isn't a whole lot left here, but they have opened a small museum. There was a US helicopter and some rebuilt fortifications. As well as a really ugly monument. The men stationed here suffered heavily and were often without supplies for some time. It was hard to read the info in the museum which referred to the soldiers as the imperial aggressors. We then briefly stopped at the Dia Phon Bridge which had been part of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

The most interesting part of the day was visiting the Vihn Moc Tunnels. The tunnels were right at the border of North and South Vietnam. The sides of the road were speckeld with bomb craters that are turning green with grass. To protect themselves the people in this area moved underground. There were rooms for schools, meetings and indivudual families. There was even a maternity ward. The tunnels were quite large and most of the time I was able to stand up straight. Nicole is about 2 inches taller than me and she had some problems though.

Before heading back to Hue we made a quick stop at a very ugly war memorial. Why are they all so ugly here? The ride back was three hours long. It was almost 7 when we returned. It had been an incredibly long day.

After some dinner at Thu's we found a great bar where they let us pick out the music while we played Majong. We stayed there a little longer than we had planned before heading back.