I am driving over the much fabled Ho Chi Minh Trail. This stretch of mountains became one of the most important corridors the Vietnamese could have wished for. The U.S. National Security Agency once referred to the Trail system as “one of the great achievements of military engineering of the 20th century.” Along these mountains, the National Front for Liberation of South Vietnam, or the Vietcong, as the US forces referred to them, supported their cause. The Trail has its origins in early trade routes in these parts, but by the end of the Vietnam war, it had became an elaborate network of roads, storage areas, barracks and command facilities.
Route 9, or AH16, takes me over the range and between the peaks. Most of which are around 600m. The Song Thach Han river is below me to the right, as it heads east and then south towards Dong Ha and the south china sea.
The Song Thach Han river
In 1941, Ho Chi Minh (Born Nguyễn Sinh Cung in 1890.) returned to Vietnam to find it occupied by two foreign states: Vichy France and Japan. He had travelled the world, spending time in London, France and the United States. Not the peasant I always thought he was. He took control of, and developed what was to become the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and declared the independence of Vietnam in 1945. (I found an interesting similarity here to how the formation of the US came about, when a group of men met in secret to do the same in 1776.) The new declaration was contested by the US and other nations in that it was based on a Communist government. This was the start of the cold war, and Communism was not a popular way to go.
Over 58,000 US servicemen died in the war, but that doesn’t come close the estimate of between one and three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, 200,000 – 300,000 Cambodians and 20,000 – 200,000 Loatians. The Vietnam war is now the example of how not to conduct a war.
Once over the mountains I head down towards the sea and Dong Ha. It’s another two hours before I arrive at Dong Hoi. The sight of the South China Sea is the first expanse of water I have seen since the Black sea in north Turkey, and it’s a wonderful sight. I ‘book’ a room for the night in the Moon Light hotel, right on the mouth of the estuary and facing the sea. Now to look for something nice to eat.