North South divide
Trip Start
Feb 28, 2009
1
34
40
Trip End
Ongoing
Dong Ha, Vietnam
Saturday, May 23, 2009
The guy was very knowledgable as he had lived in Dong Ha his whole life so he made for an excellent tour guide. He spoke good english and answered all our questions which was good as some times the tour guides are useless. First stop was and old field around 16km outside of Dong Ha which was preivously a US base. You could see were bunkers had previously been and we stood on the hill were a watch tour had previously been. The field was littered with UXO so we followed him carefully to avoid getting blown up. He showed us several shells that the locals had senseably left alone as it wasnt worth messing with even for the scrap metal. Was pretty sureal.
After that we headed to a war cemetry that had hundreds of graves of unidentified soldiers although the guy told us that apparently fortune tellers were being used to help identify them which i found extremly strange and so did he.
Afterwards we went to the Hien Luong bridge that had seperated the north and south who waited for an election in 1956 that never happened. The original bridge was destroyed by the US but they have rebuilt it next to a more modern bridge that is used by cars. There is a large monument on the south side of the bridge representing women and children waiting for the men to return from the north. On the North side there is a museum which has two extremely large megaphones complete with bulit holes, that were used to speak propaganda to the mases which could be heard north to south and vice versa. Inside the museum the guy got an old ak47 out of one of the cases and let us take photos with it which was kewl.
Aftre the bridge we headed to the only remaining tunnel from the war the Vinh Moc tunnel, were people lived for up to six months at a time. The tunnels run up to 23m undeground on 3 seperate levels. It was very narrow and the celing very low with tiny little rooms and a toilet if you can call it that which was used by over 400 people. The living conditions must have been terrible. The kitchen was no longer accesible as rain had caused it to cave in several years ago so i hope they have the place structured safely now. Was very fascinating to actualy go down the real tunnel, aparently they are some reconstructed tunnels somewhere in Vietnam but i dont think thats the same as seeing the real one. Was cool.
Once we finished the tour we headed back to the guys guset house and had some lunch then got on a bus to Hue.
