Hue and the DMZ

Hue

Not enjoying my suggestion of  "pose like a concubine"

Long Hung Church

23m underground inside the Vinh Moc Tunnels

Sniffing ants

The Reunification Express

On the Perfume River in central Vietnam, Hue offers a small glimpse of the country pre-communism.  The Citadel and Imperial Tombs are now icons of Hue, although modern Vietnamese attitudes toward these remnants of the imperial institution have sometimes been chilly.  About 75km south of the 17th parallel, Hue hosted some of the bloodiest battles of the French and American wars.  The palace was looted by the French in 1895, and most of the Citadel was leveled by U.S.bombs when South Vietnamese and U.S. forces re-captured the city following the Tet Offensive.

The Citadel, which includes the Imperial Enclosure and the Forbidden Purple City, is so large that it is easy to find an isolated, ruined, and overgrown area to privately take in the atmosphere and history.  And the structures that have survived or have been restored feature beautiful and ornate Vietnamese architecture.  The imperial tennis court is one sign of the increasing western influence of the early 20th century and, set in the middle of the second enclosure, it is now fully operational and open for free play to the public.

The Imperial Tombs, most about a dozen kilometers farther down river, are perfectly preserved.  Each tomb is on its own enormous lot of land and, built during the emperors' lifetimes, they are awesome manifestations of the imperial ego.  With manicured lakes, elaborate stone temples, beautiful statues of unicorns, elephants, and mandarins (advisors to the emperor, not ethnic Chinese), and courtyards of frangipani trees, the tombs were favored hangout spots of the emperors.  Perfectly peaceful spaces to compose poetry or lounge about with one of the approximately 500 imperial wives (even the homosexual emperor Bao Dai had 12 wives).

Christina and I also took a moving tour of the Demilitarized Zone with a former South Vietnamese scout employed at Khe San.  We visited the "Horrible Highway," the Ben Hai River at the 17th parallel, the bullet-ridden Long Hung Church, the Vinh Moc Tunnels, and a VC cemetery of unmarked graves.  Quickly dismantled in 1973, the sites of former American forces bases are now just quiet fields of peppercorn and rubber trees.  In fact, there is little to actually see in the DMZ: our experience stood on the emotional stories of our guide.  Imprisoned in a Vietnamese re-education camp following the war, shot at by gunboats while attempting to flee the country (the thousands who left following the war are known as "boat people"), spied and reported on to the communist police by his neighbors, denied support by the U.S. military, shamed by his publicly educated daughter for fighting with Saigon, his story was heartbreaking, if probably typical of former South Vietnamese soldiers.  It was interesting to contrast his version of events with the party-line of the museums we visited, as well as to see where he departed from the historical narratives we accept today.  It was a profound experience which has already been diluted by time.