So we left Phong Nha at 9am and headed to the Vinh Moc tunnels, 2h away.
The tunnels are basically an underground village, built to escape the bombs being dropped by the Americans in the 1960s. Which on those villages alone, were a colossal amount.
First we watched a video explaining the site but with some cool original footage from the time.
Unlike the tunnels in the south – which were primarily fighting tunnels, for the resistance to secretly fight the occupation, and they’d just go back to their houses afterward and pretend nothing had happened – these tunnels were built to provide shelter for the entire Son Trung and Son Ha communities to live in.
There were 3 different layers, each layer serving a different purpose, going down to 23m, the network spanning over 2,000 meters.
They were also much bigger (taller) than the tunnels in the south. When I went in those, you basically had to squat right down on your haunches and shuffle through, where as you could stand up in these.
The tunnels were built to include small living spaces for each family (I mean small), meeting halls, kitchens that dispersed smoke safely so they wouldn’t be discovered, fresh water wells, huge air vents up to the surface and a hospital to treat the wounded and provide medical care for those living in the tunnels.
At least 17 children were born in the tunnels during the war.
The weapons were kept at a depth of 23m because bombs being dropped from above could reach 18m below, so they were safer at a deeper level.
The tunnels were built near the sea, and on a slight gradient, so rain water / flooding could disperse out towards the sea; though the tunnel outlets were about 90ft higher than the sea itself, so no risk of flooding from the sea.
After the tunnels we got back in the car and drove to Hue, about 3.5 hours away.
I had thought there would be enough time to go and explore the Hue imperial city when we arrived, so we could do it all in one day and leave early the next morning.
But in reality, we arrived around 4pm, no one had really eaten all day except for ice creams, and so we just rewrote the plan. We got a linner at the hotel (hybrid lunch/dinner) and just chilled out for a bit because it was lashing it down.
We are staying on the imperial city side of the river, so in the evening we took a little exploration walk, over one of their cool rainbow lit up bridges, to the other side of town.
We watched the famous dragon boats on the ‘Perfume River’ below, walked along the rivers edge for a while and then trundled up to walking street (which was not walking street on the day we went, was just ‘street’).
After a big shopping spree in a little arty shop, selling nice organic cotton T-shirts and prints with artwork by local artists it started chucking it down again, so we found a bar and spent the rest to the evening hanging out, eating, drinking and playing jenga.
Imperial City
The next morning we were up relatively early (for us) and went to check out the imperial city. Which is a misnomer anyway, because Vietnam was never an empire only a single nation, but it’s called what it’s called, so…
The imperial city is a huge fortress which served as the political base and home of the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945 ie where the King, his family and concubines lived.
Vietnam had been under China occupation for 1,000 of its 4,000 years so it was heavily influenced by Confucianism and the ways of Emperors, so the Imperial city looked pretty Chinese throughout, though it’s not as grand as the Forbidden City in Beijing.
You enter by the Meridian gate – which we are pictured outside of – and only the King was allowed to use the central entrance. I think the army and ministers used the doors either side of the centre. The centre has a yellow roof, whereas the sides have green roofs, because yellow is the colour of the king.
It’s always cool to walk the same stone floors and use the same doorways as monarchs from the past.
We got a guide, who was very excited to practice her English and rattled off dates and ages of Kings like Rain Man.
But it was helpful to have a grasp of the different stages of the dynasty and what buildings were used for what.
She also taught us that yellow was only to be worn by the King. Purple by the Queen. The royal number was 9. 8 for Buddha. 7 for fairies (very important apparently but didn’t get to the bottom of it). And the King came above Buddha, for them, which doesn’t sound very Buddhist but whatever.
When the French invaded they put certain members of the royal family on the throne with the hopes of controlling them (ie age 10 princes) but usually failed, as they often chose to join the militia against the French.
The main highlight for the kids, was one of the lakes where you could feed the fish with some packets of food you donated a bit of money towards… and there was a HUGE catfish.
We finished at about 1:30 and headed back to the hotel, where the car I had arranged at midnight the night before was waiting for us, to drive us 3h south to Hoi An.
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