Follow the Sun....

A diary of Leigh & Rita's trip to the USA, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia,Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and a little add on, Barcelona.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Hue

27th - 29th January 2007

We travelled up to Hue by bus. The journey itself was pretty uneventful, but on arriving in the town we were met by a frantic crowd of Cyclo drivers, hotel touts and street vendors. O.k. this is not unusual in Vietnam, where every opportunity is taken to extract the tourist Dollar (or Dong) - and why not?, but the intensity of this attention was far greater than any we had thus encountered.

I was determined to find our own hotel and select our own mode of transport to take us there. However, we were met by this frenzied mob and although managing to shake the majority off, were still left with one totally persistent cyclo (rickshaw) driver. In the end to ward him off as we spied an internet cafe, we dived into it and made as if to log on to email. He was right on our shoulder. And so we opened up an e-mail (from Auds). He was still over our shoulder, but now appeared to take a healthy? interest in the content of the mail.

We still managed to avoid his ministrations and found ourselves a taxi instead and asked them to take us to our Lonely Planet Guide selected hotel (which turned out to be pretty average anyway).

Talking of Internet cafes, in Hue we found it extremely difficult to get any usage.
Despite there being plentiful cafes available, all the slots were taken by teenage and younger boys playing computer games. O.K., I can see why they need this kind of entertainment. The city streets and pavements are full. Full that is of motorbikes, people cooking food, dogs, cats, garbage, cooking equipment etc. etc. There is nowhere for anyone to play, although you do observe groups of youths kicking a shuttlecock about between themselves. Very talented they appear to be, too. This does not just apply to Hue, of course. Saigon, Hanoi, Danang, Nha Trang and Dalat all possess the same make-up of human life.

We weren't that impressed with Hue. It was very overcast and with prolonged bouts of rain, though and no doubt this coloured our views on the City. I had to take issue with the LPG's suggestion that a cruise down the picturesque Perfumed river was a must for any Vietnam traveller.
The river running through the city was grey,langourous and laden with dead dogs & cats (probably). Picturesque? Perfumed?. Actually Perfumed is the name of the river and I guess it did have a perfume of sorts.

On the 2nd day of our stay in Hue, we had booked a tour to take us too the Demilitarized zone and the Vinh Moc caves. This did prove altogether more interesting than the city.
In fact the day started in quite an interesting way. At 6:30 a.m. we were waiting in reception for a taxi to nip us through the town to join our bus for the tour. Two motorbikes turned up. The other couple who were waiting in the rain with us for the taxi (Mike and Lucy) were adamant that they were not going to travel on the back of the motorbikes. The hotel porter then sent the motorbikes away and the four of us travelled in a car to meet the bus.

The drive to the DMZ was eventful only in as much as we witnessed the aftermath of a lorry hitting a motorbike. This accident, looked as though it had contributed yet another road death to the spiralling numbers killed on the Vietnam roads (40 deaths a day on average, this does not take account of seriously injured, obviously). Vietnam is smaller than Britain, but has 83 million population, less 40 per day that we know about!

We were talking to a couple from Dublin at the breakfast stop. They had just spent 3 weeks in Laos. Apparently it's considerably more primitive than Vietnam, but they enjoyed it. One perturbing sight they witnessed though was that of five live dogs strapped to the back of a motorbike, obviously bound for someone's table. Also they were saying that as rat is a particular favourite in Laos lots of their fellow travellers on the local bus had bags of the headless dead animals.

Anyway, we're not going to Laos this time around.

We headed for the Vinh Moc tunnels which are about 10km north of the DMZ. There are in the region of 210kms of these tunnels and during the Vietnam/American war, the North Vietnamese villagers (i.e. the Viet Cong,- the Çommies lived in them. They were occuppied for 5 years and 17 babies were actually born in the tunnels. All 17 are still alive and have re-unions each year when they revisit the tunnels in which they were born.
The reason that the villagers hid in these tunnels was to avoid the intense American bombing. Ironically, the Demilitarized Zone was one of the most heavily bombed areas in Vietnam. They are still completely in tact, unlike the smaller and more well known tunnels of Cu Chi in the South, which have been enlarged in order that Western tourists can actually fit in them! We walked through these tunnels at Vinh Moc. I had to say it didn't do too much for my claustrophobia, but I got used to it eventually. I think we were actually in the tunnels for about 20 minutes. It really gave us the feeling for how difficult/impossible it would be to live in them full time. Indeed, the occupants of Vinh Moc, during that 1966 - 1971 period, could only stay in the tunnels 10 days at a time. Only, I say. There was originally only one ventilation shaft for the tunnels and it was as black as soot down there, and quite airless but the Americans kindly created one more ventilation area with a mis-directed bomb. The VC covered this up with branches to conceal it.

Hi Everybody! Rita here. I am going to tell you about the journey back from the DMZ. There were at least 30 of us herded back into the coach and off we set for a 3 hour journey back to Hue. After about 90 minutes or so our tour guide got off the bus to go to her home. About 10 minutes after this stop our coach came to another stop and to our surprise the driver moved over and a young man, who we took to be a relative took over the wheel and so we spectators (those of us who were still awake, or aware)started to witness the beginnings of a driving lesson. Firstly, the young man was unable to put it in gear, after several failed attempts, our experienced driver reached over and muttering manipulated the gears for him. And now with a shudder the coach lurched forward which elicited much hooting of horns as the coach careered into the thick traffic. Unfortunately, our learner driver was so nervous (but not as nervous or as hysterical as the passengers were becoming!), that he was unable to straighten up and so the vehicle carried on swerving across the wide road into oncoming traffic. Mike (as in Mike and Lucy) who was sitting on the back row in the middle seat had a perfect view of all proceedings, was by now up on his feet, demanding in raised tones that the driver change back, "'Change Driver"he commanded, serveral times to no effect. Mike then turned his attention to the dormant and placid passengers, "They've changed Drivers! They've changed Drivers". And again to the "Drivers" themselves, "Change back!". Mike was relentless in his enterprise, and just like the Vietnamese Persistency pays off, as the coach pulled up and our Driver, without a word, resumed the wheel and drove us home - a little quicker than we would have liked, but no doubt he was looking forward to being shot of us!

We walked back with Mike and Lucy to our hotel from being dropped off in the city centre and shared a good laugh about the 'driving lesson'with 30-odd passengers on board the coach. He didn't even display an L-plate. Imagine that happening in England down the M1 we chortled! We ended up arranging to dine with them later and so we found a good curry house. Beers all round except for me, as I am doing a 21-day stint without alcohol and it was only Day 12 and besides the water tasted well, just like water actually. We ordered the 'works'had a few drinks between us and got a taxi there and back and the entire bill came to a total 16.00 quid! 8 quid per couple, and the food was perfectly fine.




Inside Vinh Moc tunnels

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