To get from Ninh Binh to Hue involved losing our virginity… we mean night bus virginity, sickos. These busses house 30+ westerners in cubby like pods that are so uncomfortable we are sure they are actually meant to house midgets, (cough) sorry, we mean little people. Making it through the night required massive amounts of sleeping pills or massive amounts of liquor. Duh, we obviously chose the former. After 17 days of torture (11 hours total) we arrived at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the area that separated North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Completely untrue to its name, this zone was one of the most militantly active spots in Vietnam and remains riddled with history to this day. The first spot we visited was a war history museum, clearly erected (hah) by the victors. The captions on the photos told of terrified, outnumbered, and defeated Americans and the Vietnamese soldiers were glorified as indisputable heroes. The guest book told a different story. People from all over the world, including many Vietnamese and American soldiers, wrote of personal experiences, different viewpoints and new perspectives. Comments praising Ho Chi Minh and communism were abound. Of course, we had our own thoughts on America’s intent, political misgivings and the final outcome, but we shared the opinion of many foreigners who were appalled by the museum’s disregard for the value of all human life. Regardless, this museum was an interesting physical manifestation of just how polarizing the Vietnam War was and remains today.
The Vin Moch Tunnels were our next stop. This underground network of passageways, family rooms, storage units, a hospital and a kitchen housed thousands of people during the war. At some points people would stay underground for periods of up to two weeks straight. The caretaker of the tunnels today, a small mute Vietnamese man, lived in the tunnels for over five years to evade the daily bombings the DMZ endured. We crawled around in near darkness as we explored this damp underground home.
Eventually, we reached Hue (pronounced Hway) and checked into the Backpackers Hostel. We shared a room with four British children and one American infant. They begged us to read them bedtime stories as they drank themselves into oblivion. Unfortunately for us, they never went to sleep and instead spent their nights pushing over giant metal bunk beds, ripping doors off of cupboards and dripping blood everywhere after punching all the walls in our room. Mind you, this was at 4. A. M. When the hostel authorities arrived they all pretended to be sleeping in Jen’s twin bed, piled up, as if the night guard would believe that five people would sleep in a twin bed with eight other empty beds in the same room. Idiots or British? We will never know.
While the nights found us restless yet amused, the days found us exploring the nearby citadel and royal tombs. Wonderfully ornate and picturesque, these structures were beacons of Vietnamese architecture and a sight for sore eyes. The incessant rain gave the stone carvings, thatched roofs and large ponds a rather mysterious quality. The farther south we got, the more and more we liked this country.
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