Evening everybody, hope all is well back in blighty - as I construct yet another blog entry on a PC that is about as useful as a one-handed bricklayer in Baghdad, I understand the pain you are going through in not having our photo's updated to coincide with the latest entry - the reason is that there isn't much by the way of broadband here in SE Asia so will give it a go on the next PC we come across that as I write, the letters appear less than 10 seconds later…Before I continue, quick Happy Birthday to Autumn Wren Abernethy who is now a superb 1 year old (so much better to be 1 than 'None'), and to Auntie [Wendy] Teresa who is slightly older.So we've left Hanoi [and its damn pavements] on an overnight bus destined for Hoi An - and it has to be said, the journey was pretty good with plenty of sleep largely due to the bus having flat-beds. Pretty good idea actually - the only thing is if you get a snorer next to you (and you're a grumpy tired person like me) then there is a chance of fireworks. But alas, our fellow passengers kept themselves quite so we woke up in a town called Dong Ha.Now, as I've mentioned we were supposed to complete our journey in Hoi An, with Dong Ha only being a toilet stop, however yours truly was acutely aware of the significance of this little known 'pee pee stop'.Dong Ha interestingly enough (although I'll let you be the judge of that) was a former US Marine Command Post and is the closest town to the DMZ (Demilitarization Zone - I won't go into what this is, all you need to know that this is where Vietnam was split into North/South following the 1954 Geneva Accords and the scene of a huge amount of hostility between the North Vietnamese and the South/Americans).So, to the amazement of our fellow travelers, who couldn't believe we were going to curtail our journey in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain, we got our backpacks from the bus and "used the force". We were lucky enough to meet up with a guide who could take us to all the locations of battle for the day, so a clad in garments usually reserved for a winters day in the Lake District, was listened to 'Hong' open-jawed at the stories of the war and the relevance to the sites we were visiting.The first point of call was the Doc Mieu Firebase which was one of a string of firebases the Americans built as a front line which allowed then to view the entire featureless plain of the DMZ (the Americans actually flattened the whole area for better surveillance purposes). It was a pretty exciting opener as we were only expecting fields, but actually you're met with a rusting old US tank in the bushes, a series of bunkers, the odd bit of sandbag, but most notably the landscape is pocked with craters from heavy bombardment and the lack of vegetation due to the exfoliants the 'yanks' used.The second point of call was one of the hundreds of thousands of military graveyards of dead and MIA soldiers from both the North and South Vietnamese armies - the interesting point being that many of the headstones for the NVA gravestones have no information except 'Liet si' ("martyr"), this is because the NVA didn't carry any dog tags, so any unidentifiable bodies remained as such, whereas the South Vietnamese [like their American allies] did, hence their headstones were largely completed.The most sorrowful aspect however is that in their grief, the families of the NVA soldiers missing in action have paid for witch doctors to find their sons/daughters graves so they can complete the gravestone.The third point of call was set deep in the jungle that remains near the DMZ, here we were able to see the complete decimation and scale of the B52 bombardment in the area (i.e. land where today's rice farmers haven't filled in). The whole place was like the moon with trees, with many of the craters being about 12-15ft deep and up to about 25ft wide. We had to stay close to out guide as there is still a sizeable amount of unexploded ordinance in the area.You don't have to reads on if you're bored…..Our penultimate stop was the Hien Long Bridge over the Ben Hai river. The river was the actual border point between both countries, and around 5km each way to the edge of the DMZ.The bridge itself was the only available crossing point on the entire border, and following the Geneva accords was open for 55 days for expatriation to commence from both sides (ultimately the many of the 'Vietcong' stayed in the South which is a primary reason for the North's victory all said and done).Our last stop was without doubt the highlight. The Vinh Moc tunnels are an amazing complex of tunnels where over a thousand people sheltered, sometimes for months on end, during the worst American bombardments. It was extra special as the whole section that has been opened to the public was in actual fact open for just me and belle - because the weather was so bad, no trips had been coming from any of the nearest towns, hence we spent around 40 minutes, guide aside, without seeing another person in the tunnels, and then another half hour walking around the crater ridden preservation site complete with trenches, anti-aircraft installations and remnants of unexploded bombs.So that was the DMZ, certainly not the last reference to the war with the US (as you'll see in future blogs), but certainly one of the best.Now, how do we get to Hoi an…..erm……Belle?