We were staying in Hue and had become interested in taking a tour of the DMZ only after reading a brief history in our Lonely Planet guide. Our historical knowledge was very shallow before taking the tour and neither of us have any personal-family connections with the conflicts in Vietnam.
We looked into the cheaper options afforded by group tours but felt that such a tour could not offer the depth of insight that a private tour could. We crossed our fingers and booked with Mr. Vu, hoping that his ‘expert historical knowledge’ would satisfy our desire for a deeper understanding.
Mr. Vu’s tour exceeded every expectation we had (after reading his website we were setting the bar pretty high). We are both so impressed with the way Mr. Vu took the time to understand who we were and why we had taken the tour; with a good knowledge of his audience he was able to deliver an appropriately pitched and extremely engaging tour. From the start Mr. Vu encouraged us to ask any questions. We asked many questions over many hours and every time Mr. Vu gave us a happy and well considered response. We stopped at the sites listed on his website (http://annamtour.com/ - see DMZ tour), where at each stop he provided a good verbal on the significance of the place, this was often facilitated by the use of archival imagery and video. It must be noted that Mr. Vu’s English is the best we have encountered in Vietnam - for us this really facilitated the tour.