The stretch of railway from Da Nang to Hue is said to be one of the most beautiful journeys in Vietnam, hugging the cliffs of the national park on the edge of the coast, passing deserted bays of golden sand and turquoise water. You can imagine our disappointment when we boarded the train to find we were seated in the one carriage that had metal grills at the windows. If that wasn't bad enough, we were facing backwards. Great. The journey was undeniably beautiful, even from our cage carriage.
Our disappointed didn't end there; the main attractions to see in Hue, the citadel and the ancient tombs, were being restored, and hence were covered in scaffolding.
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| Hue citadel wall. |
The Imperial Place is in the center of the walled citadel and is currently being restored - Asian style; let's make this two hundred year old palace look brand-spanking new with lots of concrete, red brick and shiny new paint work. The former capital was bombed heavily during the war and today only half of the original buildings are standing, but these are being restored with the help of Korea's Daejon University. We cycled across the river to visit the palace and weren't impressed, especially as it's crowning glory, the South Gate, was completely obscured from view with scaffolding, boards and tarpaulins. Nonetheless, it was almost deserted in the mid-morning heat and we enjoyed walking around the gardens in sweaty peace.
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| New, shiny, restored part of the Imperial Palace. |
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| Inside the Imperial Palace. |
After a long, up and down, 8km bike ride to Tu Duc's Tomb, south of the city, we were met with yet more builders, tarpaulins and scaffolding. The former king's tomb is more stately park than burial ground, with a lake complete with an island, and separate shires for his hundreds of wives and concubines. For all its grandeur, Tu Duc himself decided not to be buried here, and was enshrined at a secret location somewhere outside of Hue. He sounds like an arrogant fool to me.
From Hue we took a day trip out to the former DMZ, where Vietnam was divided into two separate countries for over twenty years. After the French were defeated and left Vietnam the country was divided at the 17th parallel, along the Ben Hai River. The North was under communist rule and the South was democratic. Sound familiar? Korea?? After the country was unable to hold democratic elections to decided which half should govern the unified country, war broke out between the North and the South, then America got involved and we all know how that story ends.
The DMZ is 70km north of Hue and the trip was a long one. We stopped at a couple of former military bases, the Ho Chi Min Trail (former supply line for the Viet Cong in the South), and a the Vinh Moc tunnels. Most of the military bases have been dismantled and there wasn't really much to see. Khe Sanh military base had some aircraft, bunkers and artillery, as well as a ridiculously biased museum where the photo captions were so anti-American it would have been funny had it not been in such a somber context (see below). Most disturbing of all were the men walking around the site hassling visitors to buy their 'souvenirs'. Carried on a tray around their necks were artifacts the men had found in the area using metal detectors: bullets, dog tags and medals. It disturbed me beyond words that anyone would sell a dog-tag belonging to a fallen soldier as a souvenir, let alone buy one. Interested to see if they were genuine, I took a closer look, which the tout mistook for interest to purchase one of his gruesome finds. I tried explaining to him that I thought it was sick, and that those things should not be sold as souvenirs, but his English was limited to "big big big many many bunker" which he repeated to me incessantly for fifteen minutes until I ran back onto our tour bus. Our guide told me that some American tourists buy the dog-tags to take back to the states and return to the soldiers' families, which is great, but as for anyone who would want a bullet as a souvenir from a battlefield, that's just twisted.
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| Caption: "U.S. marines shutting themselves in bunkers for fear of their own shadows" |
The Vinh Moc tunnels were probably the highlight of the tedious trip. Unlike the Cu Chi tunnels, which where designed for combat, the Vinh Moc tunnels were dug by the local villagers for civilians to live away from the threat of bombs. The tunnels contained small living compartments for 60 families, each compartment was no bigger than 1mx2m. 17 babies were born in the tunnels. Although most of the day was spent inside a bus, our guide was excellent and provided a very accurate and detailed history of the area and of the war.
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| That's me, in a tunnel. Vinh Moc. |
