I arrived in the Historic city of Hue on 29th Nov after spending the night on the train from Hanoi. The City is a far stretch from Hanoi being a smittence of the size and the traffic not trying to Kill you as much. After settinling in at my hotel and stuffing some (western grub which was a blt if you were curious) down mthrough I jumped on the back of the bike and took in the Sights Hue had to offer including the Impressive waleed city and the heart of it, the Citidel. Hue up to 1945 was the capital of Vietnam before Ho Chi Minh passed that accolade to Hanoi and all governence duties were carried out in the Citidel. Not much remains after the fighting in the 60's unfortunatelty.

Next Day I went on a tour to the DMZ (demilitarized zone) which was the bordeer between the Communist North and Democratic South, which fell on the 7th parrallel which means something. The are is nothing what it used to be like before 1939 and has changed for good especially after the North's exchanges with the americans.

I saw the Ho Chi Minh trail which was used by the North to supply its fighters in the south under the Americans noses and then travelled to a former US airbase just a few miles away from the DMZ. You couldnt tell that anything had been there though but apparently it was a big base used by the marines. Once lush rainforests covered the mountains around the entrire are but Agent orange has laid its scars on the area and its now just grass. The DMZ itself runs 5km each side of the Ben Hoi river which was the border point and this entire area once settelments are now padi fields as conflict flattened the entire place.

We then visited the place where 'civilians' took refuge from the American bombardment, the Vinh Moc Tunnels. It was good fun exploring the tunnels in which people spent 7yrs living in! Hopefully they werent tall like me but our guide was only 4ft tall so he was in his element! On our way back to Hue we saw a British mine clearing team in the area and was good to see we are helping with the terribly real aftermath of left over ordinance.

On the 1st December I jumped on a plane to Saigon to miss out on the terrible weather in the middle of the country. It was the first flight for my airline (Pacific Airlines) for this route so I had to sit through a bloody press conference I couldnt understand so I did the only thing that came naturally and watched Family Guy on my mp4 player. yay!