Slept in, then after breakfast, best one yet on holiday Pho Bo noodle soup with beef,, my hearing aid started beeping. You healthy people don't have these problems. i realised I left my pack of batteries back in Hanoi so I started walking looking for a pharmacy. Lo and behold cyclo man appeared out of nowhere. I will take you to pharmacy, so I hopped on board and 2 pharmacies later we are at the watch repairers next to the DMZ bar. No battery so I propped myself at DMZ and ordered coffee. Johnnie turned up and we are chatting and cyclo man who I hadn't paid yet comes over. Temples? Pagoda's? No No No..I go and buy a fake Rolex for $13, an OysterDate with no date.
 
Later Xe Om man comes over, Temples? Pagoda's? No No . I pay cyclo man and we walk looking for the pizza shop we ate at yesterday, after 100 metres we realise it was the DMZ bar so we go back. While we are drinking coffee I go over to the front of the Century Hotel and ask a taxi driver how much to go up to the DMZ and see the tunnels there. This provokes a flurry of activity, people come from nowhere, a Xe Om driver a private car driver all quoting prices. The taxi man quotes $150 there and back, the private car man quotes $ $75 so we engage him for tomorrow.
After lunch Johnnie heads off and I see cyclo man and ask to go back to the hotel, and after a bit of hard sell he talks me into a tour around the Citadel. Again. this time we circumnavigate it and he points out every bomb and bullet scar on the walls. He stops every time he thinks I should take a photo which I dutifully did. He stops at the War Museum and I get off and take pictures of captured weaponry. tanks and planes. I must apologise for the images today, it was dark and drizzling most of the time. 
  Then we head back across the French bridge, not the American one and on the way back he suggests a massage . I had been thinking about getting one anyway so he heads off into the low rent district of Hue and pulls into a hotel parking lot. Through the parking lot I see a low nondescript building run by Chinese. A couple of gorgeous girls loll outside. In its former life it may have been an opium house. I pay my 200,000 and get a ticket. I sense that this massage isn't going to be legit. I'm ushered into a concrete room with nothing but a massage bed. Hello, my feelings were right, no shelves of massage oil, no nothing just a bed and a shower cubicle.
The young lady comes in and I ask her name. Jan she says, confirming my worst fears, fake name fake profession.
Going along with the charade I strip and get on the table. Readers, I really want a massage!
She starts rubbing my legs in a seemingly aimless manner then it comes. " You want boom boom? $100!" No thanks I want a massage. Only $100! No only a massage thanks. " I do what you want only $100" No sorry I want a massage.
So I got my massage with no boom boom. She was a beautiful woman too, but most Vietnamese are. The massage involved a lot of percussive slapping, I guess she knew what she was doing, I never know if they just make it up.
Cyclo man waits for me outside, I tell him $100 for boom boom. He says should be $50. We ride back in the rain.
Out again at n ight to the DMZ bar which plays hits from the war years and I'm talking American War. Take me home country road, Like a Rolling stone, you get the gist.....music you've heard a million times before. Meet an Aussie guy from Melbourne and it surprised me how glad I was to hear an Aussie bullshit on about any subject. He knew a lot about the war and had also been to Villers-Brettonwux so that was a bonus. Drinking 333 until I was sloshing then tottering home.