The Tour

With more than a little trepidation, I did something that I've always sworn off in the past (with one regretable exception in China): I signed up for an organized "tour." I'll be blunt, I f***ing hate organized tours - and yes, I am completely aware of the irony. For the past 14 years or so, I've made my living leading organized tours down rivers. That's probably part of the problem. I just can't handle not being in the driver's seat, so to speak. And I hate being just another tourist, herded from one sight to the next. I repeat: I am completely aware of the irony. And it hurts.

That being said, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for a tour of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) - a swath of land that stretches from the Vietnamese coast to the border with Laos. The DMZ is about a hundred kilometers long and ten kilometers wide, centered on the Ben Hai river. From 1954 until the Communist victory in 1975, it was the official demarcation line between the Republic of Vietnam (South) and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North) and, according to international agreement, the area was supposed to have been, well, demilitarized. Of course it wasn't, and the areas just south of the DMZ saw some of heaviest fighting of the war while the stretch just north of the DMZ suffered some of the heaviest shelling and bombing. Today, the former DMZ has been reclaimed by villages, towns, and farms, although UXE (exploded ordnance) is still a serious problem. I saw a few signs (the classic skull and crossbones) warning about leftover explosives. Billboards on the side of the road use cartoon characters to warn the public - primarily children - about the danger of picking up old landmines and bombs. Sad.

At any rate, while I thought I might be able to rent a motorbike and make my own way around the DMZ, the distances, rainy weather, and difficulty even finding many of the sites, convinced me to throw in the towel and submit myself to a tour. At $15 dollars for a full day, I figured I could eat the financial loss if the tour was crap. The lost 12 hours of my life would be harder to justify, but I eventually gave in.

The tour itself was typical: the DMZ tour mafia ran the show and we were shuttled from one "family" owned restaurant to another. The bus itself was alright, minus the blaring stereo, lack of rear shocks, and the a/c unit directly overhead that dripped like an incontinent old man for the duration of the trip. That just became funny after a while. Sort of. I was also surprised to discover that out of a group of maybe 25 foreigners, I was the only American. Lots of Aussies, Germans, a few Israelis, a funny Brit and his overweight Austrian girlfriend (who nearly had a panic attack later that day), and a chain-smoking Japanese kid, but no other Americans. I don't why I expected to see more Americans in Vietnam, but they've proven to be few and far between. Maybe that's a good thing (honestly, the one who stands out- a guy I met in Hanoi - was an overbearing, obnoxiously naive prick).

We managed to squeeze in quite a few sights during the day, considering the distances covered from Hue. Along Highway 9, which parallels the DMZ we stopped at an old Marine Corps. observation post called the "Rockpile." Set on top of a seriously steep limestone peak, we just looked up from the bottom - even Marines didn't climb this one, they were ferried by helicopter. A quick stop at a section of the Ho Chi Minh trail - which today is the fully paved Ho Chi Minh Highway (really). And finally a visit to the Khe Sanh combat base. The site of the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam war is now a lush hilltop covered in small coffee farms. All that really remains is the old airstrip and an expectedly biased museum display. I'm not really sure what I expected to find at Khe Sanh, but I wasn't prepared for the completely ordinary, overwhelmingly peaceful surroundings. I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, the Vietnam War was just a blip in the history of this country. The tropical landscape and even the Vietnamese people, in the form of the younger generations, are quickly reclaiming all that was destroyed by the war.

The second half of the day was spent touring Highway 1 which runs parallel to the coast line. We passed directly through the old DMZ as we crossed the flatlands that surround the Ben Hai - still sort of a no man's land of rice paddies and tidal flats. The final destination of the trip was the village of Vinh Moc, and more precisely, its tunnels. Vinh Moc was a small fishing village that just happened to find itself on the northern edge of the DMZ in 1954. For that, it suffered repeated bombing and shelling from American bombers and ships off the coast. To survive, the entire village went underground - way underground. At any given time 300 villagers (and North Vietnamese fighters) were living up to 60 feet below ground in a labyrinth of tunnels. There were rooms for living, hospitals, guard posts, meeting halls, bomb shelters, and even water wells all below the surface. Secret exits opened up into the demolished village above and directly on to the beach so that villagers could come out at night to work their rice paddies and care for their animals. Pretty amazing and most of it was open to walk (stoop) through - this is where the Austrian girl had here mini-freak out. Her boyfriend's attempt at humor to talk her down had most of us rolling, although she may not have appreciated it. Oh well.

After the tunnels we began the long drive back to Hue - 4 hours or so - and we returned after dark and in the thick of a new round of rain. My plans are to head south to Hoi An in a day - of course, the owner of the internet cafe that I've befriended mentioned that Hoi An is flooding a bit. Hmm...always an adventure.