Hue:

Hue is in Central Vietnam, about 700Km south of Hanoi. My flight from Hanoi was delayed by 5 hours, which was a nice bonus. The good thing about flying in Vietnam is that the service is like old school Western flying, with polite staff (even when you’re not in business) and little meals, even a sandwich on very short flights. It seems like a long time ago that there was any real service on flights, although it was probably only pre-2001. I was half-expecting them to have a smoking section….

Hue was once the capital of Vietnam and in its centre is a still a huge ancient Citadel with a 10Km walled circumference and a lilly covered moat.



Inside is the tallest flagpole in Vietnam, allegedly. I looked everywhere I went but I saw none more taller although it was election week / Ho Chi Minh's Birthday and there were lots of flags out for the lads.




Inside the vast Citadel area was an even more exclusive former Emporer's Palace, with its own 2 1/2Km long wall and moat.





This is the East Gate. It's ornate but in comparison to the main entrance it looks like the back door....



I took a motorbike tour around the city which I was initially wary of and had asked about a helmet. Thu, the proprietress of the business running the tour, waved me off; her brothers (of which she had 9) were the drivers – we were safe. Turns out she was right and I was being a wuss. (She also asked where I was from and then spat out a series of quick British punchlines / TV Star Catchphrases / regional comments such as "fancy a pint, love?" and "Awright my darlin'?" It was weird, like a performance she'd learnt from and for tourists. It made me feel uncomfortable for a reason I still don't understand clearly. I guess she was trying to be hospitable - she had comments for Americans and Australians too, but it felt like an unecessary performance...it made other people laugh but to me it felt like; look, the cute little Vietnamese lady can say "Booyaka!" too, just like Ali G. Isn't that funny? I feel like I might be being too harsh here, and the woman was busting her balls running her business and taking care of her large family so fair play to her, but you can't help how you feel. She could have been friendly and Vietnamese and that would have been fine for me. I'm digressing, more on backpacking culture later, though...) On the motorbikes we zipped around Hue for 5 hours from pagoda to temple to ancient tomb. By 10AM it was 38 degrees – even on the back of a motorbike the air felt less like a breeze and more like a hairdryer. It was ace. (after 10 minutes zipping around I was thinking I should have bought Jamie's motorbike....)

It was the rice harvest - in different parts of Vietnam there are 1, 2 or 3 harvests a year, depending upon how far south you live. The work is all by hand and is excruciating, bent over in 100 degree heat up to your shins in water all day picking rice, or carrying 80Kg bundles of the stuff. They earn about US$0.30 per kilo. Out in the countryside, the cattle and sometimes water buffalo wander freely onto quite major roads.



Just 10 minutes from "downtown" Hue is the Japanese Bridge, a gift from a noblewoman to the little people. It's exquisite and in the middle of nowhere. It's 300 years old or so and still in its original condition. During the midday heat the locals come and lie down in it.



When the rice is picked it is dried on the ground or on sheets laid along the roadside (which explains why there's occasionally pieces of grit in rice...) and the farmers rake it over to dry it before bagging it.



I took this as we passed a woman with a load of live ducks on her motorbike. I saw all manner of things carted around on motorbikes - live ducks, live pigs, large panes of glass, machine tools, everything....



This is the famous Bunker Hill and one of the said Bunkers. They were first used during the French war in Vietnam.



Runing below Bunker Hill is the The Perfume River, so named after the flowers that bloom briefly on it when the weather is right. The small boats in the distance house families of up to 6 who live and work in the tiny covered areas. God knows how....




On the second day in Hue I took a trip to the old DMZ near the 17th Parallel between North and South Vietnam. The history was interesting to hear but it was strange to imagine what had happened there now that it was once again productive farmland and lush mountain forests. There were photo’s at the former Khe Shan military base museum showing mountains cleared of foliage by Agent Orange and Napalm. These days it looks like a tropical version of Scotland without all the fighting. At one point our bus was stopped on the road by some kid. A minute later there was an explosion on the hillside and as shower of gravel as a mining crew blew a hole in a quarry. It was a kind of Vietnam War reality moment.

This is one of the exhibits at the former Khe Shan military base. At most museums I went to they had a display of American shells and bombs. Khe Shan was an important point in the war, the NVA faked a build-up of troops around it in the mountains and the Americans correspondingly over-defended the base, drawing troops away from other areas so that when the NVA launched the TET Offensive the US had soldiers in the wrong places. Khe Shan is a deserted, overgrown base by a small town now - the photo's in the exhibit show it as a huge military installation.




Nice Chopper.



Here's the overgrown landing-strip out back...




We stopped by this bridge which was once on one of the 5 Ho Chi Minh trails that led from North Vietnam down to the South to supply the Viet Cong with arms and supplies. part of the reason the US used Agent Orange was to cut a swathe (the Macnamara Line which was never completed) through the forests right across the country from the ocean to Laos to make it impossible for the NVA to continue the trails. The US stopped all but one of the trails.



While we were there some local kids went batshit crazy begging (under the tutelage of their father / uncle) for this woman's water bottle. They pestered her and pestered her and were just like kids anywhere with their excitement and their clamouring. When she gave it to them they shared it amongst themselves as they walked away. When they'd had enough (and before they'd finished the water) they chucked the bottle casually over the railing of the bridge into the river below and immediately ran across the road to another Westerner to beg them for their water, as if the real fun was in trying to see if they could get it in the first place, even if they didn't really want it.



The ongoing entertainment on our hot and sweaty bus ride (It was again 100 degrees in the shade) was hearing the Canadian guy behind me try to get inside the tee-shirt of the girl from San Francisco. A man shouldn’t ever listen to another man trying to shag a girl, there’s no dignity to it, and it’s too easy to hear when he’s lying, like this guy was most of the time.** At one point I thought she was going for it too. If she did then they'd probably have deserved each other, they were elite backpackers (you can see them both in the bridge photo - she's taking pictures in the middle, he'd changed into a tight tank-top during one of the stops and he was "casually" following her along the bridge. And yes, I was watching both of them. That's what gets me off....). But you know when someone has a slightly better experience than you one minute after you’ve said something, regardless of what you say? He did that – he’d taught here; bungee-ed there; and gone mine-clearing everywhere (or been attacked by machete weilding africans somewhere else). It wasn't possible for the guy to just be impressed or to say I don't know. Whatever this girl said to him he could top, which I guess is why he’d been traveling alone for 10 years because who wants to hang out with a knobhead like that? He wasn’t a bad looking guy either, but he did keep pulling Blue Steel every chance he could, which was funny after a while. it kind of looked like he'd just been slapped around the face for most of the day. Bless. Free fun for me though, small man that I am.


The North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese were once separated by this river. One side would build a tower and a flagpole and then the other side would build a tower slightly higher and erect a bigger flagpole. One side would blast speakers with music and propaganda then the other side would get more speakers and do the same thing only louder.



This is the 230 metre high (755 ft) Rockpile that the US used as a lookout in the DMZ. After the whole area had been treated with Agent Orange and Napalmed it was nothing more than a big pile of rocks, funnily enough. The US soldiers used to have to be airlifted onto it by helicopters.



We also visited the Vinh Moc tunnels. People lived in these for 5 years under heavy US shelling. Even holes made by US bombs dropped from B52s had been converted into air shafts. 17 babies were born down here, and strangely, 6 of the tunnel exits came out onto this beach. See what I mean about the war seeming incongruous in the face of such beauty?



Inside one of the tunnels: I'm 6ft tall and if walked with a hunched back and my head bowed I could get through most of these. There were three levels connected by stairs and trapdoors, the lowest level was excavated to 23 meters. It seems impossible when you're down there that anyone could have dug them as the complex is so vast and involved. There were rooms dug out in the side for people to sleep in (they were tiny) and even a room they used for baby deliveries near one of the exits....



This is the main meeting room at 15 meters underground. 40 people could fit in here - 40 Vietnamese, that is; not 40 porky westerners. They used to show movies down here as well as hold concerts and meetings.



Back in Hue it was sunset.



And I got back to my room and my little mate. I liked having a lizard in the room - even if he did hide beind the headboard on the bed. The greedy little bastard ate 5 moths for dinner one night when I came in and turned the light on. I was impressed with him to be honest. He was quick. And I guess moths are good for you as there wasn't an ounce of fat on him.



** I, on the other hand, have never sounded like a twat when I've been trying to chat-up a woman. Nor have I ever lied, ever.