DMZ (De-militarized Zone)

Well technically I guess I should say 'Our Man In Hue' - as that's where we're sat right now, but that's not as good a title. I was also considering 'Our Main In A Tunnel' but that's for later I think.

Anyway, the sleeper train. I actually slept. The journey was 12 hours, setting off from Hanoi train station at 11 pm. After wandering around Hanoi for the day, relaxing and taking in the sights that we hadn't previously seen ('Hanoi Hilton' Prison being the main one), we went back to the hotel as they said they'd arrange a taxi. However at 10.20 pm, they said the taxi was stuck in traffic as there was a Children's festival taking place. This blocked off lots of streets in the narrow Old Quarter and the traffic was chaos. However - we could get a pair of Moto's if we wanted (Parents - stop reading here until the next set of brackets) We were pushed for time, but had to strap our packs on and sit of the back of a pair of mopeds - the speedo on mine didn't work and the lights on Rach's didn't work and weaved in and out of traffic to the station. It was actually fun - well the parts went I wasn't closing my eyes waiting for the crunch of a collision. (Parents can read again now)

The train was ok, not overly quiet or smooth, but I got about 5/6 hours sleep I guess. I would have had more but they seemed intent on playing Vietnamese folk music on the speakers throughout the train. Very strange.

So we're now in Hue. It's a very sleepy place compared to Hanoi. You can actually cross the road in under 2 minutes, which is nice. The main sight is the Citadel, a huge fortified old city with a 7 metre high wall surrounding it. There's also the Imperial City (Darth Vader/Imperial Stormtroopers not spotted) which is where the Emperors of Vietnam moved the capital to in the 1800's and is based on the Forbidden City in Beijing.

We've just got back from a tour around the DMZ. We were taken over the Ben Hui river, the border between North and South Vietnam during the French/American wars. We also went down the Vinh Moc tunnels. These were built by villagers just north of the DMZ to hide in when during air raids etc. They were really impressive, carved from clay and went down 25 metres. Finally we were taken to a bit of the Ho Chi Min Trail and also to the Khe Sanh Green Beret base up in the mountains. We passed through some minority tribe villages which were amazing. We hadn't considered the mountains previously, but might change our route slightly in Vietnam to go into the mountains north of Ho Chi Min City.

I'll leave you with some stats (photos are refusing to upload again. Gah)

Number of times closed eyes on Moto Ride to Station - 5
Number of times lost Rach on Moto Ride - 3
Number of abandoned American military vehicles seen by the side of roads - 6
Number of metres of Vinh Moc tunnel walked through - 500
Number of times bumped head in Vinh Moc tunnels - 3