Hoi An to Hanoi
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2007
1
16
19
Trip End
Ongoing
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Comrade Che in Hue
. It is even a UNESCO World Heritage Site.Hue was the next stop on my itinerary. A couple hours farther north of Hoi An, Hue is located near the center of Vietnam and has been the sight of many battles fought in Vietnam throughout the centuries. The most visited sight in Hue is the citadel city of Phu Xuan which was originally built in the late 17th century. The citadel is surrounded by a mote and four walls almost a mile long each. Inside those walls, is another mote surrounding another walled enclosure. The builders of this place were determined to make a structure that if someone wanted to infiltrate it; they were going to have to put some effort into it. Inside the walled city were the living and working quarters of the emperor and all of his groupies. He also has a section known as The Forbidden Purple City. This is where all of his royal concubines were housed and taken care of. The only servants allowed to go into this area were eunuchs who couldn't have done anything even if they had wanted to. Ohhhh, the life of an emperor....'tis good to be the king!
From Hue, I did a tour of the former demilitarized zone (DMZ) where the border used to be between North and South Korea. Because I had just visited the DMZ in South Korea a couple of months before, it was really interesting to see the effects of a country that has actually reunified
elephant and trainer - imperial enclosure Hue
. We saw a couple of sites where US military bases used to be as well as the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The Ho Chi Minh trail was a network of trails and roads that went from North Vietnam through Laos, Cambodia, and down into the southern part of Vietnam. Along this trail, the communists carried weapons, food, and people to the Viet Cong fighting in the south. Because the Americans controlled the seas to the west and Laos and Cambodia were "neutral" countries in the war, this was the communists' only way of getting supplies to the South. Even though the trail was continuously being bombed, they would continue to send people and supplies south like a trail of ants. In one of the museums along the way, there were exhibits praising the revolution and condemning "American Imperialism." Again, some of the presentations were so slanted that there's really nothing you can do but laugh a little. We also visited another network of tunnels, the Vinh Moc tunnels, this time just north of the DMZ in the northern part of the country. Unlike the tunnels in the south, these tunnels were built for people to actually live in and not only escape from bombs or mount attacks against the enemy. Because of this, the passage ways were larger and there were rooms carved out along the way. A total of 17 babies were actually born in the underground hospital there. These tunnels are located where some of the entrances even open up right on the beach. Leaving here, I caught another overnight bus to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
