Hué, Vietnam

As soon as we arrived in Hue, we knew that our time here was going to be so much better. There were no hotel touts waiting for us outside the bus, and the tuk tuk drivers accepted our first answer of 'no, thank you'. What a relief!

A pagoda in Hué - I forget the name now...

The city has the regular sights of most cities - temples, pagodas, etc. What I really wanted to see during our stay here in Hue was the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) and its surrounding sights. The DMZ is a strip of land that essentially separated the north and the south during the Vietnam War.

We booked ourselves onto a one day tour to the DMZ (I was told off by an American chap for not calling it the D.M."Zee" - it was *their* war, not ours...). I was slightly concerned that it was going to be on the back of a motorbike, but this was the cheapest option for us. I had to ask whether they were going to provide us with helmets. Leathers and gloves in 35 degree heat was probably pushing it, so I decided to wear trousers and long sleeves instead (for whatever protection they might have offered me..). I get paranoid about these things!

We visited the ruins of a church buidling in the area. The walls had massive sections blown out by bazookas and were ridden with bullet holes. Can you just imagine the mess this gun would make of a human being?! I can't even start to conceive what goes through the heads of the men that design these weapons.

The National Cemetery. Graves of the North Vietnamese soldiers who died in the South. Over 30,000 at this one site.

The tour went really well. We got to see and do all that we wanted. At one point our tour guide said "You want to see that? Ok. We'll go. You're the boss". I was so shocked to hear that! On the way back to Hué we got caught in a thunder storm. I got to use my poncho for the first time, on the back of the bike! It rained quite a bit in Hué, but it was a nice break from the heat.

A bomb hole - there are still plenty of these in the rice fields.

That evening we were reprimanded by the hotel owner next door. "You went on a tour to the DMZ today. Why didn't you book through your hotel? The man who runs your hotel, he's my friend. He's a good man." Hotels over here offer cheap accommodation in the hope that you'll also use their restaurant and book tours and transportation with them. I proceeded to tell him of our bad time in Hanoi. He wasn't going to make me feel guilty for that!

Bill, our guide, taking us down into the Vinh Moc Tunnels. The North Vietnamese dug these tunnels to evade the Americans and South Vietnamese during the war. They even had a maternity room which delivered 17 babies! Bill was 22 during the war and worked as an interpreter for the South. He told us lots of amusing stories about the young American soldiers, as well as the devastating effects of agent orange on his own family.