Hue - the ancient capital

Location: Sapa - far north Vietnam
Weather: Coldish, misty and mountainous

Next stop on the bus was 5 hours further north to Hue. Hue was Vietnam's original ancient capital city. The old town is located within the walls of a large citadel, within that is the splendid Imperial Palace which was the first thing I visited after hiring a bike when I got there. The gates of the citadel are impressively large, but the gate on the Palace is quite spectacular and doubles as a watch tower and is set opposite a huge flag tower. It has the same layout as Bejing's Forbidden City, but many of the buildings are in ruins due to bombings in the war. They did have a royal dance and theatre show though - which is the best I've seen so far in Vietnam.

The next day I took a full day tour of the De-Militarized Zone or DMZ. This was the area either side of the 17th parallel (basically the Ben Hai River) marking North and South Vietnam according to the Geneva Convention. It lasted between 1954 and 1975, but was circumvented by the communists using the Ho Chi Minh trail to send supplies to their comrades in South Vietnam. We got to see the Con Thien Firebase - an American arms base that was severely bombed and eventually overrun by the VC in 1972, the Dakrong Bridge where you could see part of the Ho Chi Minh trail (apparenly the HCM Trail is now being made into a major motorway), Khe Sahn town that was deforested with Agent Orange, the Hien Luong Bridge over the Ben Hai River and finally the Vinh Moc Tunnels where the VC hid from the American bombs. These tunnels were much larger and more planned out than the Cu Chi ones, because, apparently families sometimes stayed down there for 5 entire days!
To be honest this wasn't a staggering tour, considering it took from 6am to 6pm, but I found it interesting enough because of the war history.

The next day I met up with my friends from Hoi-An and went on a boat trip down the Perfume River to visit the Royal Mausoleums - grand temples and stone palaces where the old emperor's lived. I say old, but despite them looking particularly ancient many were only built in the 19th century.
Bill Gates was late once at an airport, but managed to get a plane to come back off the run-way to pick him up and I almost matched him on this trip. The boat stopped along the river near each temple and I managed to miss it after getting back late from one of them. It just sailed off, with everybody except me and despite the protests of my friends(I wonder if they really said 'quick go, go, leave James there', hehe). However, after waving frantically at the boat, it did come back and saved me a long walk home!

By JamesReed on 21.04.05 @ 04:10 PM GMT