hello from the DEMILITARIZED ZONE!!! area that faced much of the American War, the whole area is comletely full of huge craters, old tanks, shells, old american air bases, and of course you cant see it all at first glance, you have to dip deeper, literally, going underground, well over a thousand meters of underground tunnels, with around 16/17 openings, going down to depts on 23 meters. thats deep. down there there are larger openings where families lives, bomb shelters, maternity clinics,living rooms, hospitals, even a theatrical centre. a full blown community lived and fought here, really astonishing. must have been killer for the suntan. wouldnt have liked it. however they were sensible in the fact that many of the openings come out onto the beach hidden by foliage cover, and a few came out into the mountains. really amazing place. so whilst england were spanking ze germans to win the world cup, these guys couldnt even watch it. as they doubtedtly had any sky tv, but im sure they found out the result later. today on the DMZ tour we took in all the sights where the americans had built/taken over bases. most of the sights are along the Ho Chi Minh trail, along the highway 9. the HCM Trail is basically a series of raods trails and paths between north and south vietnam through the truong son mountains and eastern Laos and the hardcore Viet Cong used it to transport troops and guns etc. so the americans tried to cane it with as many tonnes of bombs as possible! around here is a place we went to called the khe sanh combat base, they said it was here that the bloodiest of all battles took place in 1968, around 10,000 north vietnamese died, and untold civilians. americans dropped 1000kg bombs, napalm of course, mortars and loads of artillery rounds. we went up to the museum on the plateau up a mountain, but pretty boring stuff, few shocking photos and a few helicopters, but mainly lots of coffee fields. overall a cool day. got a flatty half way coming down a trecherous (that how u spell it??) mountain side, which was not amusing. last night i got to Hue kinda late, booked my DMZ tour and bus to hanoi, and went out on the town with a couple english blokes i met in the restaurant at dinner. got pretty hammered on dirty whisky and stayed up to watch the chelsea charlton game(saw 2mins then fell asleep at 230ish) which left me feeling nice and fresh at 530 in the morning for wake up. go on charlton! and the palace! oh golly, my autobus is arriving soon and i need some food, gota go, off to HANOI!!!!!! then halong bay for a 3 day island tour! nice