Hue

After arriving in Hanoi from Ha Long Bay I got a chance to have a quick shower and a bite to eat before I was on my next bus to Hue. This was an overnight bus and this was the cheapest way to do it. In fact I had bought an open bus ticket to get me all the way to Saigon stopping in the main tourist towns on the way. The bus was a sleeper bus which basically means it is a regular coach without seats but with beds instead. The beds are basically sun loungers and they are like bunk beds. You get space to stretch out provided you arent too tall. But me and the two canadians decided to get the seats at the back where there were two levels of five squashed together. Big mistake. We had assumed that everyone on the bus was everyone for the trip to Hue but we were mistaken. Instead of 3 of us over 5 seats we had the full complement. On top of this we were on the bottom bunk which we soon realised meant on top of the engine. Oh, and the air condition was about as effective as a person blowing on you while we were beside the wonderful smelling toilet. Sound good? Well this was an 18 hour bus journey. Got a good image of how comfortable we were? Arriving in Hue was a blessing and I was glad to get off after getting maybe 2 hours sleep. The other two were bound for Hoi An so I think they switched buses. They had no interest in Hue as most travellers dont give it ringing endorsements. It is styled as a cultural city full of history and it is full of history but what I found was of all this history there is little to physically see.

I stayed in a nice hostel called Hue backpackers which has a 'Club Hour' in the evenings where they dish out free beer to residents and they have a happy hour later in the night too. It was comfy and here I met Mitch and Rob who had been on the bus with me. We went out that night and bumped into a few other people like Jasper (dutch) and a pair of Aussies. We ended up drinking in a bar called 'Brown Eyes' mainly because they gave us 2 for 1 on cocktails. I did a tour of the town the next day and saw some of the historical sights. Perhaps if I knew more of the history they would have been more interesting but they were ok. Mostly it consisted of places where things used to be but were destroyed in the war or have been put to other uses since. It was the same the next day on a tour of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). This was a tour of an area where the border between Northern and Southern Vietnam used to exist. It was heavily bombed by the Americans and they also had some forward bases here to keep track of the movements of the North armies. The best part of it was the visit to a series of tunnels where a whole locality would hide when the American bombers came. They had everything they needed in these tunnels and for years they had to use them as a shelter from the war. Besides this there wasnt much to see on the tour. There was an area where a US outpost used to be on top of a big rock with a good view of the surrounding landscape. Now it is just a big rock. This was also the case with the other US base on the tour which has been retaken by locals for farming. These people do not want to remember the history of the war as for them it brings so much heartache and pain. The tour guide informed us of the importance of some of the areas we visited such as the Ho Chi Minh trail which was a secret path used to provide provisions to the rebels in South Vietnam. There are a lot of stories of struggle and hardship and the museum we visited offered stark reminders of this as well.

That was pretty much Hue in a nutshell. A place of history where the scars are still felt. The giant citadel in the city centre is still mostly demolished from bombs but is in the process of being restored. Im sure when it is finished it will be impressive but for now it is simply a sad reminder of war's effects on a country and its people. Next up is Hoi An which largely escaped the war so expect a slightly more upbeat post.