After another crazy night bus - this time for 12 hours - we reached Hue. Surprisingly we both managed to sleep which was a plus and definitely unexpected! We checked in to 'The Friendly Hotel' - which was extremely friendly, especially for 7am - dropped off our stuff in the best hotel room yet and went to see what Hue had to offer.

We took a private long boat down the river in Hue to the Pagoda. The boat was pretty cool as it was shaped like a dragon, but the river looked filthy and the engine made a racket, so not as tranquil as you may imagine! Wandered around the sight of the pagoda for half an hour, took the standard tourist pics and got back on the boat for the Imperial City. The Imperial City was huge and took hours to get around. he architecture was really nice and lots of the walls still had the floral art work on them. A lot of the city had been destroyed in the war, but they showed videos and pictures of what it did look like which was interesting as it was a massive city within the city.

For the next day we had booked a day trip to the DMZ. It was a lot longer on the bus than we had first thought - a total of about 6 hours - but worth and and different to everything else we had done in Vietnam. Our tour guide explained how the mines from the war were still killing locals even today in the area, especially children who would play in the local fields. We were told that many locals were severely disabled and gave birth to disabled children as cans that had been used to store napalm where sold on after the war as containers which the locals unknowingly used to store what or food. She explained that the area has never received any help or compensation from the US government despite the extreme destruction caused in the area. Instead the area survives from the help of NGOs who have helped with schooling, education of the bombs and many act as a call out service to deal with any mines discovered. As we drove through the area we could see where the bombs and napalm had left bald areas of land all over the mountains which previously were covered in jungle. We also passed through a minority village which consisted of people who had been relocated from the mountains, and the tour guide explained how these people were forced to a new way of life and offered little support.

We stopped off to see a few historical spots on the way, such as the river that divided North and South Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and a war museum. The museum as interesting as they had some old planes/guns/bombs, as well as lots of pictures with some pretty opinionated captions. One described the American soldiers to be 'cowering in their bunker, afraid of their own shadow'.

We then went around some of the tunnels. They went on for miles and where on three different levels, the lowest about 50ft below ground. People used to live in them for up to 5 days at a time. We saw a family room which was literally big enough for 4 people (small people) to sit down in, and the maternity ward - a gap big enough for a long table and a doctor. They weren't tiny - I could stand up - but definitely weren't spacious for anyone of normal height!