After seeing pretty much all Hué had to offer, I booked myself onto a bus tour to see the Vinh Moc tunnels among other sights. Don’t get me wrong, I hate bus tours, but in Vietnam they are the easiest way to see some of the more remote tourist sights if you are not prepared to illegally hire a motorbike. (Also my insurance does not cover me to be on a motorbike at all, as either driver or passenger, so I was steering well clear!)

The tour was one of those full day jobbies, so my hotel asked me to come down early for breakfast, which I did… Except it took them so long to cook my breakfast pancake and make my breakfast coffee (and the bus arriving slightly early) that it was only given to me as the bus arrived! Instead, they gave me a bread roll and some butter and jam to take with me, as well as a little bottle of water. At least it was something! First stop was to “see some ethnic minority villages”, ie the bus briefly stopping near a house on stilts with a satellite dish, and taking a picture from afar before immediately departing again. I chose not to leave the bus! Next stop was the Ho Chi Minh trail, crossing the Dakrong bridge on the way to Khe Sanh. We went past the Rockpile, a US outpost during the war on the top of the hill, where soldiers had to be airdropped and worked mostly on ensuring communications could be passed along. It looked incredibly inhospitable, with blazing heat, torrential rain, malaria and a multitude of other insects and creatures to harm the soldiers.

We arrived at the Khe Sanh base, and it was so eerie. Everything was almost untouched from when the US retreated from the base after winning over 70 days of warfare. Planes and tanks were just on site, unmanaged but there, along with bunkers, sandbags, and the runway. Very strange… And of course the standard peddlers wandering around trying to sell you helmets or dog tags. Hopefully fake?!

We headed back to Dong Ha for some crappy tour trip food (note: if you want to have some nice local food, NEVER take a tour bus. They will somehow manage to take you to the worst, most over-priced restaurant in the local area… Quite incredible if you think about it!) and drove through the DMZ which is still surprisingly empty even now. Quite a few signs at the side of the road advertising anti land mine initiatives actually, and all paid for by eithe Canada or Japan; definitely one nation who may or may not have left all those landmines whose payments are conspicuously absent here!  We also crossed the famous Ben Hai bridge which was painted two different colours,  which shows where the DMZ border fell. The north was originally painted red by the Communists and the south painted their half yellow. The north side is now painted blue… I guess to show the difference?

After some horrific food, it was off to the Vinh Moc tunnels, which during the Vietnam war were located on the border between north and south. Built over seven years, they sheltered the inhabitants of the village from the war, but also enabled the people to assist the local guerilla soldiers, with various levels within the tunnels, the very deepest being used to shield bombs and weapons. Villagers lived here up to 7 years; there were “family rooms” which were barely big enough to fit one Westerner, a maternity ward, and a central meeting room that could apparently fit 60 people but it was so hot and sweaty, more than 15 would have been awful.

Finally, we went back to Hué via a Communist war hero cemetery. I’d had enough of rhetoric by this point… So I went for a beer!