Ok, so I've been bad and not blogged for 10 days. We are currently in Hanoi, awaiting a 20 hour bus to the Laos. I'll catch up in bits though to break up the last couple of places we've been, starting with Hue and I'll lie about where I am!
It took us around 4 hours to reach Hue by bus from Hoi An. After checking out a few hotels we found one for £2.50/each a night which also let you use a nearby swimming pool for free. The swimming pool wasn't great. It's under cover so no sunbathing and the water is freezing! There are only 5 sun loungers too but it's not a bad place to keep cool if you don't want to be stuck in your room.
On our first full day we took a cyclo (a seat attached to the front of a person's bike which the locals use as short distance transport. Going up a bit of a hill I felt pretty guilty watching Ben's driver struggle!) to the big Citadel on the other side of the Perfume River. A lot of the palace was in ruins after being bombed in the war, but the entrance and moats remained with some of the structure also being restored.
The next day we went on a 12 hour tour of the DMZ (de militarised zone). We went past the Rock Pile, an American base at the top of the highest mountain by the old Ho Chi Minh trail so that they could see everything that was going on. They had also made a small helicopter landing pad at the top which you could just make out. We visited the memorial of the trail, where it used to run and the bridge now in it's place, the river below being the old divide of North and South Vietnam. Next was a stop to a small museum which used to be an American base. There was an old landing strip as well as some helicopters, tanks and inside the museum photographs of the area during the war and weapons etc. recovered from that time. A guest book had a mixture of messages in but my favourite had to be 'War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.' Simple and effective but I couldn't get the song out of my head!
After a terrible lunch, we drove another hour to the Vinh Moc tunnels. I knew they had been made a fair amount bigger for tourists compared to the Cu Chi tunnels so I didn't expect them to be quite as realistic. However, there were many more tunnels at this site which were a lot deeper and were home to many more people for 6 years. Sometimes the people did not leave the tunnels for as long as 5 days and nights. There weren't any traps like with Cu Chi, who were fighting with the Americans. It was more to hide from bombs being dropped. The tunnels got smaller the further you walked along them and you could see things such as family rooms and a well. They had used models of people in some areas to demonstrate what life was like, which were a little corny but did help to bring it to life! The maternity room was a little too much with a model in though, but it is impressive that 17 babies were born underground in such a small space. Not at the same time obviously! We ended our tour with a visit to a military cemetery. Many of the graves just had 'unknown' on them. It was pretty sad.
Hue didn't do much to impress me unfortunately. My least favourite place we have visited in Vietnam. It was also the most humid too, very hot!