Vietnam
Trung Phúc

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    • Day 12

      DMZ Run : It's Tricky

      March 21, 2018 in Vietnam ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

      You know me. I like to keep these write-ups breezy. I shoot for an irreverent tone, keep any criticisms tongue-in-cheek, and maintain relative detachment from facts and detail whilst delivering accounts of interesting occurrences that reflect our personal experience with a brand of wit that has been reviewed as both 'trys too hard' and 'must try harder'. When we in the future leaf back through the hardback copy of this travel book I sincerely hope it will bring back memories, bring a smile and above all else be a concise record of our trip without any superfluous sentences or unnecessary pentasyllabic words or tiresome lists of exemplar alternatives inserted only out of pure self-indulgence on my part so as to satisfy my own personal penchant for meta-commentary.

      I mention as there may be a degree of tonal disparity with today's entry. We had booked, and took, a 10-hour day trip to the former DMZ (De-Militarised Zone) wherein we saw and learnt about a great many things that aren't at all funny. I'll be trying for a nuanced spirit, trying harder than usual without trying too hard, but will shy from making the heavy light.

      It will be tricky; I did go back and forth on the blog title but figured I was moderately safe with an obtuse pun that doesn't really work and references something that hasn't been relevant since the 90s. Well, I guess it's like that, and that's the way it is. Huh.

      We'd arranged to be picked up at 7:30am, giving us just enough time to grab breakfast first. Unfortunately for our driver the road outside our hotel, The Times, is currently a-changing; the resurfacing works blocking the through-road and meaning that although he could reach the front of our hotel we had to very very slowly reverse out of the narrow alley before we could get going.

      Our first stop was to pick-up our English-speaking tour-guide in a town on the way that was sufficiently unnotable to not make a note of. She was wearing a very loud top emblazoned with the massive words 'CHOOSE JUICY', designed by Juicy Couture. This, we felt, might jar slightly with the serious history she'd be imparting through the day. It did.

      We first travelled along the Highway of Horror. As a result of the Easter Offensive of 1972, the nearby Quang Tri province was lost to the North and people fled down this highway, the only escape route. Many, many people died, as is reinforced by the many gravestones in the one of many cemetaries we visited. We had to cross an active railway on foot to reach it and our driver was nearly hit by a train as it's nigh impossible to tell the horn of an oncoming train from the stupid amount of horns being honked by highway traffic. I saw a Caramac wrapper on the railway track and remarked I was surprised this particular snack had made it's way to Vietnam and wondered if they still made them in the UK as I've not seen them for ages. Woody told me they do.

      Next we visited Long Hung Church. This place was subject to 8 days of continuous attack and bombings during the same offensive, and it shows, being little more than ruins. It has been kept as it was, with its remaining walls strewn with bullet-holes. Tourists used to be able to pry bullets from the wall as souvenirs, but they're all gone now.

      We next passed by The Rockpile, which was a US Marine outpost atop an outcropping of rock in the shape of a gigantic pile, hence the imaginative name. It was smart positioning as the pile was unscaleable, with marine shifts being facilitated with helicopters. As such, we couldn't drive up it and could only see it from afar, illustrating a poor lack of aforethought on the part of the Americans who should really have predicted it's future pertinence as a tourist attraction. We took a selfie, as objectively this wasn't too depressing.

      During a walk through a small village we remarked on the ubiquity and versatility of bamboo, which the locals seemed to be employing for a dizzying myriad of purposes. In the west we're giving Nobel prizes to Graphene and the Vietnamese have been using the true wonder material for centuries.

      After viewing but not crossing the Dak Dong Bridge, a key junction of the Ho Chi Minh trail that was used by the North to transport troops and supplies during the Vietnam War (which incidentally the Vietnamese refer to as the American War, for obvious reasons), we visited a former combat base, now a coffee plantation. Mark and I had some coffee and Mark bought some coffee and Woody still doesn't like coffee and then we went for lunch.

      Following some average grub at a place packed with coach parties so you know it was overpriced but it's still Vietnam so it was embarrassingly cheap, we went north to the actual DMZ zone. The rocks and hills suddenly disappeared entirely and we were in a wide, flat space filled with paddy fields. We reached the Ben Hai River, the natural divisional boundary between the former North and South Vietnam, and walked over the Hien Luong Bridge that crosses it. In the middle there's a line representing the formal border. In addition there's something called the 17th parallel that was a proposed but unused border line but I don't know what that is and didn't want to ask because everyone else seemed to know already.

      On both sides of the river there were enormous loudspeakers that had once been used by each side to broadcast propaganda at incredible volumes at one another. Both sides also used to compete to make sure they had the highest flagpole, regularly destroying their opponent's and forcing repeated, hasty rebuilds. Such juvenile japes, reminiscent of prank-wars between rivalling summer camps in films I've never seen but have seen referenced sufficiently to know they must be a thing, sounded quite amusing and brought a temporary touch of levity to the day's mood. It was easy to imagine a Vietnamese Rowan-Atkinson-type uttering sardonic quips pertaining to such events in Blackadder Goes Pho.

      Our final stop was the Vinh Moc tunnels. These were subterrainian tunnel dug into the clay over thirteen months and occupied intermittently for five years by the local farming community of circa 100 people in a similar fashion to an air-raid shelter. We were able to go underground through the tunnels and view the pokey living and utility spaces.

      It was set over three levels down to a depth of 23 metres. We were given some plastic, made-in-cheapest-part-of-China, 'Baby's First Flashlight'-standard torches to help light our way through. Mark and I had to duck for most of our time underground as the ceilings were constructed intentionally low so as to be burdensome should Americans ever infiltrate, again showing poor precognition as to the site's future commerciality. Exploring the tunnels was admittedly rather fun (at one point we found the coastline!), though it was harrowing to think how people lived there. There were many impact craters to be seen topside, showing just how under-attack this area had been and how clever an idea and well-constructed the tunnel network was.

      Overall it was a good day. Sombre in places but certainly very interesting; I learnt a lot and would recommend it to others. On the drive back we passed some fields where they were growing peanuts. Our tour-guide spoke excellent English, leaps and bounds ahead of my Vietnamese, but it transpired she couldn't quite pronounce 'peanuts', unintentionally omitting the 't' sound. We passed a lot of such fields, necessitating frequent repetition. It would have been more embarrassing to correct her.

      Dinner will be addressed separately.
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    You might also know this place by the following names:

    Trung Phúc, Trung Phuc

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