Epic Vietnam Journey (Day 10-Hue-Dong Ho)

I wake up at 9:30am (kind of late for me these days) and head to Dong Ho, which is the city furthest east in the DMZ.  As I previously stated, I wanted to take a bit of a circuitous route to Dong Ho by heading West, then North up the Ho Chi Minh (HCM) Trail, and then East along the DMZ to Dong Ho.  

Before I go, I Vietnamese-rig (I made up this term, meaning to fix something, so that it kind of works temporarily, but will never work like new) my helmet.  Although I would rather not wear the helmet, I’m getting to feel like an entitled Westerner when I don’t wear it, so to fit in with the crowd, I do my best to fix it.

As I was riding out of Hue, this woman on a motorcycle rode up beside me and asked me where I was going.  I told her I was heading east toward the HCM Trail.  She says that she could escort me to the road that leads to the HCM trail for a small donation.  I ask her how much of a small donation, and she says 200,000 VDN (10 dollars).  I was like 200,000 VDN?  She tells me that she has two kids and that she is very poor.  Of course, she is riding a nice Kawasaki motorcycle, whereas I am on my POS motorcycle.  I tell her that is way too much, but eventually she convinces me to do it for 5 dollars.  I say OK, because I’m still a bit apprehensive about getting lost as my google map directions only refer to “route number 9” and there is nothing marked 9. Good thing that she helped because there were 3 forks or intersections where I would have gotten lost for sure.  On the way, she invites me to her house for tea and pineapple, and I just can’t resist pineapple, so I tell her sure thing.  I get to her house, and she was not kidding when she said she was poor.  It was basically a barn with a bed and dining room table.  She didn’t even have a refrigerator.  But I have to hand it to her as she did her best to decorate it and was quite house-proud.  I drink tea and eat pineapple with her, and she tells me about her two children who are attending an expensive high school, and her husband who works in the fields somewhere.  I forget how much the high school cost, but it was a lot by Vietnam standards.  I tell her that I have to get a move on, and we take off.

Before we take off, I pulled on the strap of my backpack and it ripped out of the seam.  Later on the same day my sunglasses break.  So, literally everything that I have bought in Vietnam has broken.  My POS motorcycle (3 or 4 times-I forget how many now), my knock-off Adidas sandals (my second pair of knock-off Adidas sandals are now ill-fitting because the straps expanded probably due to the rain), my knock-off North Face backpack, and my knock-off Oakley glasses.  Given what I do for a living, some may say that this is karma, but really, you cannot find the real stuff in Vietnam, so I have no choice but to buy these cheap-ass knock-offs.   

Along the way, the escort lady almost hits a pedestrian, so I’m glad to know that it is not just me.  She honks her horn and this guy hardly reacts.  I’m thinking this is not just an issue of lacking survival instinct.  This guy is dumber than a box of rocks.  Eventually, we get outside the city limits of Hue, and I’m starting to get the feeling that there was a miscommunication, because we continue on the 1 Highway, which leads directly to Dong Ha.  I’m thinking that she probably thought I wanted to go to Dong Ha and then cut westward toward the HCM trail.  We stop and she points to a fork in the road and tells me to turn right.  I pay her, but because she was so nice to me, she was indeed poor, and she spent a relatively long time on the road with me, I ended up paying her the original 10 dollars that she requested.  She was very grateful.

I continue on, and sure enough, I hit Dong Ha first, so I decide to make the best of it, and find a hotel room to drop off my backpack.  At least I can visit the DMZ without a load on my back.  I ask the receptionist for a tourist map, and she mysteriously calls someone on her phone requesting something.  I get on the phone with the guy that she called, and he said that he would be right over to help me.  I’m thinking, Jesus, I just need a map, and I just know that this guy is a tour guide, which I didn’t think I needed, but turns out I really did need.  He shows up, and tells me that he can show me around the DMZ by motorcycle, that he was a South Vietnamese soldier that fought in the war in the 60’s, and that he can tell me the entire history of the DMZ—all this for 15 bucks.  I can’t pass up this deal, so I take it, and off we go on his motorbike eastward along the DMZ. 

Along the way, he tells me the entire history of the DMZ, how the Americans built up various bases along the DMZ, etc.  We visit one site (which is not on any tourist map) that included an old American aircraft hangar that was later turned into a propaganda theater when the Northern Vietnamese later occupied the DMZ. 

He showed me many other sites, including look-out points and bases, which were not marked at all on the road, and then to Khe Sahn, which has the famed army base somewhere, but is not well marked.  

At the army base, I saw various pieces of equipment, including tanks and helicopters, that were left behind by the U.S. when they abandoned Khe Sahn.  

There was a museum there with the usual propaganda, which basically entailed characterizing the American army personnel as getting the hell out of Dodge (complete with nice pictures showing Americans running) when they were over-run by the Northern Vietnamese Army.  The fact is, a treaty was signed and both the American army and North Vietnamese army withdrew from the DMZ.  

The Vietnamese propaganda machine is very pervasive to this day.  If you visit any war-themed museum in Vietnam, it invariably will characterize the Northern Vietnamese Army as the brave warriors who were attempting to liberate South Vietnam from the American occupation, thereby unifying North and South Vietnam.  They call it the American War here, but what they don’t say is that before the Americans showed up, North and South Vietnam were already fighting for years, and after the Americans showed up, they were still fighting for two years.  Granted that the Americans certainly played a large part in the course of the war, but they make no mention that South Vietnam (with the exception of the Viet Cong) did not want reunification.  I know that the propaganda machine is working in the Vietnamese schools, because the young tour guide in Hue referred to North Vietnam as being free, and the government of South Vietnam as being controlled by America against the will of the South Vietnamese people.  I’m no expert in Vietnamese war history, but as far as I know, America’s involvement in the war was strictly a military operation after we were invited to come.

The Vietnamese propaganda also extends to the effects of Agent Orange, which they blame on causing defects in 8 million people (10% of the population as there are around 80 million Vietnamese nationals).   As horrific and heart-breaking as the defects caused by Agent Orange are, there is no way that 10% of the population is affected; else you would see it everywhere on the streets.  I suspect that there is quite a financial incentive to over-exaggerate the problems caused by Agent Orange, since American charities and non-governmental organizations donate a lot of money to address the problems of Agent Orange, and there is a movement here to get full reparations from the US government for those affected by Agent Orange.  However, there is the little problem of how to determine which people have actually been affected by Agent Orange, and the US needs proof.  Speaking of, I am watching an Agent Orange documentary on television right now, and they had a snippet on Friendship Village (where I worked).  It was kind of cool to recognize some of the children on television.  

I’m surprised that, despite the propaganda, Vietnamese people actually do like Americans.  I guess after the war was over, it was like, sorry my bad.  No hard feelings.  Ummmm, just look out for all of the millions of tons of unexploded ordnance that we inadvertently dropped out on your country.  We’re still dudes, right?

So, we then make the long ride back to Dong Ha.  Along the way, the tour guide shows me various villages where minority Vietnamese people live.  Despite having virtually nothing, these children are very happy.  There was actually a village far down in the valley that we stopped and looked at, and from a distance (about a kilometer), I heard the sound of children’s laughter.  I was amazed.

So, I’m actually glad that my original plan of visiting the DMZ by myself first and then going over to Dong Ha failed miserably, as I probably would have gotten very little out of my visit to the DMZ. 

Being that there is more of the DMZ north of Dong Ha to visit, my tour guide offers to hook me up with another tour guide the next day.  I accept his offer.

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