8th October 2009 - 10th October 2009:

We got the sleeper train to Hue and shared a compartment with some Italian guys although neither of us seemed to be up for much talking so we all just headed to bed. We were awoken the next morning at 6am by one of the attendants who shouted at us that we were arriving in Hue and should get our stuff together.

He was 'shooing' us along to the exit and had the door open and the steps down before the train had even arrived at the station and at one stage we thought he was going to make us jump onto the platform from a moving train to save valuable time. Luckily though the train did come to a stop and we were able to get off the train in an orderly manner - thank god for that!!

We were exhausted after all these early morning wake-ups and this wasn't helped by the usual "greeting" of a throng of locals shouting 'taxi, cheap cheap!' and 'come to my hotel, good price for you!'. We eventually found the pick up guy and he brought us to our hostel where we spent the rest of the day chilling out and shopping for some bits & bobs.

The following day we took a tour to the DMZ region, this is where Vietnam was once divided in two and where a huge amount of fighting took place during the Vietnam War (or the American War as it is known in Vietnam). Our tour guide - An - was an ex-South Vietnamese army lieutenant who worked alongside the American troops in order to protect the South from the communist North as the South wished to retain its republic status - we hope you are enjoying the history lesson and just so you know there will be questions at the end!!!

An explained to us that during the war time, the US paid him over $5k per month and he had a beautiful home, however when the South conceded to the North he was imprisoned for five years and all his possessions - his money & home - were taken from him. He now earns just $150 per month as a tour guide and goes to show how much his life has changed.

He also showed us a number of cemeteries which are throughout Vietnam which house unmarked graves of the soldiers who fought for the Viet Conh (VC - North Vietnamese Army). There are thousands of graves with no names and one of the reasons for this is because the VC could not afford dog tags and therefore were unable to identify their fallen. Sadly this means that a lot of Vietnamese people were never able to pay their respects at the grave of family members that died during the war.

Overall it was a very emotional day but An was a very good story teller and we particularly enjoyed his impressions of the Americans - 'get your f*&king head down' - and how the war was lost due to the American's being lazy and spending the day smoking Opium and reading playboy (probably not the greatest tactics!!) whilst the VC worked hard to defeat their enemy.

We spent our last day walking around the city and visited the citadel however by the end we where so knackered from the heat that we couldn't face walking home so instead treated ourselves to a cyclo (basically a kind of pushbike with chairs on the front but instead of sitting beside each other the seat is only wide enough for one person so means you sit on each others lap) back to our hostel where we chilled out, grabbed some food and booked our tickets for Hoi An.