Five flavours: Day 3 Hue

Soundtrack: “Khe Sanh”, Cold Chisel

Today I’d booked us into a tour of a number of significant sites relating to Viet Nam history, reunification, and of course the American War. L isn’t a fan of war tourism in general, and while I wasn’t looking for some sort of huge glorification, I’m fascinated by significant places of all stripes, and with Hue being so close to the former Khe Sanh AFB, it seemed an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

After another hotel breakfast of soup, ca phe sua dau, and assorted other bites, our guide H met us in the hotel lobby. Once the group of 5 tourists were all in the bus, she told us a bit of her history and what was in store. H was able to bring an interesting perspective to the history: her father sided with the south during the war, and subsequently did time in one of the re-education camps post reunification, followed by a stint as an agricultural labourer due to Le Duan’s plans to rebuild the country in the late 1970s.

H took us through the last 200 or so years of VN and the region we were touring. First the last royal dynasty set up Hue as the capital, then came the French colonisers, who generally subjugated the populace and built roads. VN missed out on the first few years of the war in the Pacific, as the Vichy French rolled over and let the Japanese do as they pleased, before eventually the Japanese had enough of the French and sent them packing around 1943. Once things went pear shaped for Japan, Uncle Ho stepped up in the North, while British occupation forces placeheld the South until the French came back. Uncle Ho went out intot he countryside, where he promptly set about making the French look silly. In a rare moment for any European coloniser, the French decided they couldn’t mess up two colonies at the same time, so after getting their arse handed to them at Dien Bien Phu sent their troops to keep things messy in Algeria. The Geneva talks in 1954 went back and forth over where to draw a line in the middle of VN, which ended up around the 17th parallel. At the same time the deal was that both halves would hold elections in 1956 to sort out the whole reunification thing. The line was drawn, folks were cleared out of the area, and a demilitarised zone was set up.

This all sounded good, until the South got the CIA to do some pre-polling which showed Uncle Ho had the election sewn up. Just as you can’t technically have a disease or virus if you don’t get tested for it, you can’t lose an election if you don’t hold it. Uncle Ho and Le Duan then set about white-anting the crap out of the South, making friends, bumping off recalcitrant public officials, and throwing wild communist parties; the government of the South meanwhile spent their time making themselves as unpopular as possible, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, letting the CIA hang around, and pissing off Buddhist monks to the point of self immolation. Despite all this the peace held, the DMZ stayed a place where both sides spent all their time poking their tongues out at each other and claiming to have the bigger penis until the US got bored, invented the Gulf of Tonkin, and started exporting marines and conscripts by the thousand. The DMZ became the MZ, and the whole area around the 17th parallel got a lot of attention from passing B-52 bombers.

The US then learned that you can’t simply bomb the Vietnamese into submission: folks who will carry artillery piece by piece up steep hills and down ravines in the dead of night don’t scare easily. So the US painted a big target on a patch of ground about 8km from the Laos border, filled it full of Marines, and called it Khe Sanh. The North then threw thousands of soldiers at it, leading to a lot of folks dying and at least two awesome songs. After the dust settled, the US decided they didn’t want the place and went elsewhere. Over the next few years Khe Sanh was sporadically used as an air base, before eventually it was put to good use and turned into a coffee plantation.

After the Oliver Stone movie, Cambodia started to get annoying, leading VN to do what the West should have and shut down Pol Pot. This pissed off the Chinese, who’d generally been a disappointment by fighting with the Soviets and getting friendly with Richard Nixon. The Chinese continued to disappoint by invading VN, dying by the thousands, and leaving a lot of mess behind. This didn’t do much for either country’s economy, but at least since 1979 VN has generally been at peace. H took us through the various stages of the reunified government, from being solidly communist in the 1970s through to the current individual capitalism underpinned by communism.

The things you talk about in minibuses. Our first not quite stop was the ruins of an old Catholic church. The church was spared being levelled, unlike just about every other building in the area, so the locals would use it for shelter. It’s a picturesque ruin now, its outer walls showing signs of conflict. We admired it from the bus, but didn’t get out.

Our first actual stop was the Quang Tri citadel, built during Imperial times and then was then converted to barracks for the South VN army. In 1972 the North occupied it and the surrounding area, leading to the South and US pretty much flattening everything. The original walls stand, but inside is now a memorial to the fallen. Statues line the path to the main shrine, a small dome laid out according to compass points and suitably symbolically adorned with the five elements wood, fire, metal, water, and earth, along with the symbolic animals of dragon, turtle, phoenix, and unicorn. There’s also a dog who takes comfort in the shade provided. Here we placed incense to ensure the souls of the departed stayed remembered and respected.

Throughout the tour, to give H a break from speaking, she played various music from the time of or about the war. So there we were, in a bus going through Viet Nam’s central highlands, listening to Bruce Springsteen, Cold Chisel, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among others.

From here we headed along Route 9 towards Laos and parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail. This strategic road was built by the French, and throughout the conflicts women would drive supply trucks without windshields and windows along this and other muddy paths in all weather. Today the road is no less strategic, being a major route for trucks hauling all manner of loads. We crawled up a number of hills stuck behind large vehicles, and as the traffic police tend to enforce this route our driver seemed content to stick to the right side of the road. H explained that while the land Ho Chi Minh trail along the border with Laos and Cambodia is the one most people know, there was also a supply trail by sea, as well as a financial trail through Hong Kong. The enterprising North had a lot of ways to supply its people. We passed the Da Krong bridge that had been knocked down one less time than it had been built, the most recent construction thanks to a gift from Cuba (also the previous version, which was a Cuban gift after the war but was severely damaged in major flooding in 1999).

Unless Don Walker’s protagonist’s heart can be found in the rare liberica coffee grown at Khe Sanh, it’s no longer here. While most of the world’s coffee is either arabica or robusta, in these parts (and almost no where else) they grow liberica. It has a flavour similar to jackfruit, a bold meatiness. For just over a dollar, if you ask for “meat coffee” the friendly folks will hand you a small cup of the rich brew and a can with some condensed milk in it to mix to your preference.

H took us around the accessible bits of the former site: the second runway, which was cleared and used by the south when they re-established the base later in the war, was significantly shorter than the over 1km original runway (interestingly the runways were constructed of steel); some tanks left behind (with the advice that while it was okay to climb on these, we’d encounter beehives if we tried to crawl under); a Bell Iroquois and a CH-47 Chinook helicopter; and a C-130 Hercules transport. There was also a new addition to the site, a C-119 transport, an odd looking twin tail plane. The government’s plan appears to be to keep adding to the site to encourage visitors. We then had some time to free roam, where L and I encountered some friendly locals who just wanted to have their pics taken with us under the C-130. We didn’t climb on or crawl under any tanks.

Then it was lunch, and we went to a farm just down the road. When it’s not farming season they host and feed tourists. Here we were treated to a lunch of omelette, green beans, a cornstarch wrapped spring roll, tofu, stirfried beef and eggplant, and a bbq chicken drumstick, along with rice. All were delicious, the beef and chicken full of flavour, the fresh beans light and crunchy, even the tofu was good. We were also greeted by a local cat that seemed to always know when folks were there for lunch. We later found out that shed where we ate was built on top of the first Khe Sanh runway.

From Khe Sanh we headed back to the coast, the bus soundtrack changed to local songs of and about the times. H then told us about the formation of the DMZ, and how the Vietnamese had 10 months to decide which side they wanted to live before the border was closed. The bulk headed south, a mix of people fearing Ho Chi Minh would ban religion, that the communists would take everything, as well as a healthy number of spies for the North. Less headed North, I guess they didn’t get the marketing right. Many heading south sold everything they couldn’t take, and there were some who stayed and bought up big, figuring the South would win and they’d be able to sell at a profit, I’m guessing that didn’t work out so well.

The heavens opened as we got to the bridge that marked the border, so we headed into the museum for shelter and had a group pic with the large statue of Uncle Ho. The wall also had a large quote from Ho’s successor, Le Duan, from around the time I was born. I asked H to translate, and he was praising the efforts of the local police in their duties maintaining the area, but didn’t say anything about my birth, so I guess he didn’t get the news in time. H took us through the DMZ’s cold war: each side set up loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda and diss tracks at the other; there was also the battle of painting the bridge, the North wanted to paint it all their colour, the south then painted half over different, so the North matched it, then the south went for yellow, which the North didn’t like but didn’t match; there was also the battle of the flag poles, as each side sought to put up a pole bigger than the other, which apparently the North won.

It was still torrential rain, so L and I walked to an old hut near the bridge under the cover of umbrellas, but couldn’t really get further. It’s not the first bridge in VN we’ve had obscured by inclement weather, after fog hid a full view of the hand bridge in the Ba Na hills. We practically swam back to the minibus, and headed off to our last stop, the Vinh Moc tunnels.

Because irony is alive and well, it stopped raining at the tunnels. Having survived but not really enjoyed the cramped humid Cu Chi tunnels, I wasn’t completely looking forward to this part, but figured it was just something that had to be done. Fortunately the Vinh Moc complex was designed for people (albeit short people) to live in for days at a time, so were generally at least 1.5m high and 70cm wide, though have since been widened to encourage larger white folks to visit. The story goes that the US were unhappy about the locals supplying troops on a nearby island with food and arms, so spent a bunch of time bombing their villages. Meanwhile the locals were unhappy about the US bombing them all the time, so they dug some tunnels 10m deep into a hill. When the US dropped bombs that could penetrate 10m, the locals went down 15 metres, the 23 metres. Here they then set up places where babies could be born, the sick and injured could be treated, food and arms could be stored, and even a meeting room (luckily for them the AV requirements for meeting rooms in the 1960s were non-existent, as there was no wifi or mobile coverage that deep). They even had cooking facilities and a toilet (of the non flushing variety unfortunately, the cooking ashes were used to absorb odours). The tunnels could feed and sleep up to about 200 people at a time, but with just 1 toilet they were lucky that the longest period they ever had to spend down there was 5 days. It’s a demonstration of how resilient the Vietnamese are, as if I had to share an ash-flushing toilet with 199 others for almost a week, I’d probably be waving a white flag before you could say “portaloo”.

The Vinh Moc tunnels were also built with ventilation in mind, so while we’re not talking a split-system in every room at least a number of shafts let some air through in places. This certainly helped the tour experience, as we were able to do a fair amount of the complex with no more than about 5-10 minutes underground at a time. The last section, the newly re-opened upper level, was the most challenging, as this was still roughly the original dimensions, requiring a bit of squeezing and a lot of crouching. While I’d managed to mostly dry out after the rain, by the time I emerged from the tunnels I was covered in sweat. L isn’t a fan of tunnels, especially this type, so while this didn’t make her like them any more, all credit to her for getting through. I also owe her a big expensive massage pampering session.

Sometimes the drive back to Hue can take 2-4 hours, depending on traffic, but our faithful driver Mr T took us along some backroads I’m guessing less policed, sticking firmly to the middle of the road and zooming past scooters and bicycles, past trucks, and even had us tailgating an ambulance (while I don’t speak much Vietnamese, I don’t think they have a word for tailgating) to get us back ahead of schedule. Tired and full of history we said our goodbyes.

For dinner we went in search of banh khoai, Hue’s version of banh xeo, the crispy rice flour pancake we love in Hoi An. In Hue these are fried to a bubbly texture, served folded over like an omelette and filled with prawns and pork. Then it’s wrap a good piece in rice paper with some bean shoots, fresh greens, and thin slices of vegetables, add some chilli jam, and eat with a solid dip of peanut sauce. Crunchy salt peanut goodness. We found these at a little restaurant not far from the hotel, who also had other local offerings such as banh beo, rice paper rolls, and banana flower salad. These banh beo were served in little dishes, topped with crunchy pork, and delicious with nuoc mam. The pork and prawn rice paper rolls crunched with some additional greens, and the banana flower salad was all the freshness that people talk about when talking about Vietnamese food. An unusual note was the addition of a variety of chocolate mint, which in all honesty I could have done with less. A little goes a long way.

A long day, full of tales of resilience, of embracing the present and future, of food and music. Tomorrow’s our last day in Hue, where the plan is to sleep in and relax.