DMZ Tour
Trip Start
Aug 04, 2010
1
13
54
Trip End
Feb 04, 2011
Dong Ha, Vietnam
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Anyway, when the bus stopped for breakfast in Dong Ha about 6:30 AM, we got out of our bunks and had some coffee. I don't think I've talked about Vietnamese coffee yet, but it is probably the best I have ever had. It is finely ground and then a few teaspoon fulls are placed in a metal container with a screen in the bottom and covered with another metal plate with holes in it. This metal container is the perfect shape/size to fit over a small drinking glass. Then, they put in about a half cup of hot water and let it slowly filter through the coffee and into your cup. The process may take 3 minutes or so and it looks jet black going into your glass. Then, you take off the metal "brewer" on top and put in a few teaspoons of condensed milk. It is strong as hell but tastes great.
So the bus stopped, we met a charming man who welcomed us and started asking if we were interested in a tour of the DMZ. We did want to do it but thought we would have to go to Hue and then backtrack on motorcycles or a car to get there. This man, Hoa, said he would give us (we met two nice Aussie girls in Ninh Binh - Claire and Cristy) a great tour via car and then drive us to Hue later that day. He showed us a notebook of great reviews/comments from travelers and seemed like a genuinely good guy, plus his English was great. We accepted...
After coffee and a little more breakfast, the 4 of us, plus 2 other travelers (Austria and France) got in a 4-wheel drive and headed north. On the way, Hoa gave a great history of Vietnam conflict going back to the pre-1900 days. Living just south of the DMZ, he was born in 1955 and drafted into the South Vietnamese Army at the age of 18 in 1973. His brother and dad served and were both wounded in combat. After the US pulled out and the north beat the south, he lived in a "reunification" labor camp for 2 years where he was forced to work his ass off and listen to propaganda for 4 hours a day. His brother was a high rank in the South's Army and the US helped him get out and move to Colorado, while Hoa is still here.
Our tour started at Doc Mieu Base, just south of the 17th parallel, where the US had an advanced surveillance base for observing penetration of the DMZ. Nothing is left today except an old shell of a US tank and overgrown bomb craters. Across the street, literally, is on of the 72 national cemeteries in this province. It is nicely built and maintained and reminded me of a very small Arlington. In the cemetery are only NVA and Viet Cong remains, as well as empty graves and mass graves of NVA/VC fighters. All US casualties were of course flown home, all SVA casualties were sent back to their families (and their families were given compensation), while the NVA/VC fighters were buried where they died and no compensation given to their families. After the war, some remains were located and moved to the cemeteries, but ID was difficult because they had no dog tags, etc.
We drove to the Ben Hai river and saw the bridge that used to separate N and S. It has been reconstructed and buildings (large propaganda loudspeakers, police/army building, neutral observer building, etc) on the N side were too, although not so on the S. Post-Geneva Convention it was the interface between the two countries and hostilities were almost unheard of, but after US arrival, it became a place of real danger and tension. There was a nice museum on the N side, but some of the pictures (of bomb craters for instance) were just unbelievable.
Next we drove to a place I really wanted to see and it turned out to be the highlight - the Vinh Moc tunnels. The whole village dug this network and lived there for 6 years during the war, with 17 children born there (we met one of them and his eyes/mental development were not normal, potentially because of being underground in the early stages of life). We had to stoop a little, but there was a big meeting room, a hospital room, storage for weapons, sleeping rooms, a bathroom, a laundry room, a cooking room, air holes, a well, etc all in 3 levels of tunnels up to 90+ feet deep. A few lights were in there, but we used our headlamp mainly. There are a bunch of exits, some to the beach, which looked beautiful, and some to the anti-aircraft trenches above. Food came from boat from an offshore island and was supplied by Cuba, N Korea, China, and other pro-NVA countries. On top were a ton of overgrown bomb craters and old some anti-aircraft positions.
We drove south to Cua Tung beach and I had a swim and a beer before heading back to Hong Da. Hoa was a great guide and very nice man with 2 kids in University right now. He wants to make his own business, but under the watchful eye of the Communist government is unable to. Thus, the driver owned the car and was the default money-man of the operation, even though Hoa did all the work. That made me a little sad.
We had lunch in Dong Ha and then drove to Hue about 2 PM. We found a decent place for US$12 (forget the name) and went to the DMZ bar near the river for a beer or three. We walked across the bridge and looked around the town a bit and ate at a recommended restaurant and had the local specialties of banh beo and banh khoai. One was a pork paste skewered on a lemon grass stalk and grilled. You eat it by putting rice paper in your hand, putting in fresh herbs (basil, mint, other stuff I had no idea) and cucumber and bean sprouts, and then the pork and rolling it up. Dipping sauce was sweet and nutty maybe with kidney beans smushed up, garlic, lemon, spices, and organ meats? Whatever it was it was really good. I can't remember if it was that night or not, but it was raining and we found a great little coffee/ice cream shop overlooking the Perfume River behind a nice bookstore - like the Vietnamese version of Borders! WE had frozen fruit drinks and they were great.
