We lunch today at Dak Glei, a village named after the hills tribe whose land this is. An elderly gentleman greets me with a genuine warm smile. Hero tells me later he was a Viet Cong soldier during the War.
We’re following the famous Ho Chi Minh trail today. The Ho Chi Minh trail isn’t one path but a network of trails that provided a vital supply link for the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong to the south, eventually arriving near Saigon. Soldiers and essential supplies used these trails extensively throughout the War. It’s mountainous country and visually stunning. We are presently about 2000m up. The trails also extended into neighboring Laos. To cripple the effectiveness of this supply route, the Americans bombed it heavily, including eastern Laos. The amount of bombs thrown at the trails provide baffling statistics breaking all sorts of records but non-the-less the Americans failed. The consequences of the bombing for Laos are still being felt today, with their land still littered with unexplored bombs. The type of bombs used were great voluminous things that were designed to disintegrate into hundreds of boomlets at a certain distance from the ground. Apparently these boomlets were very inefficient at exploding on impact but can remain active, and still do across the land. Farmers and children are still being killed, or worse, horribly maimed from these invidious things.
The road we are on today is the Ho Chi Minh road and it roughly follows the famous trail. This road is a sophisticated concrete highway that snakes it’s way around the mountains. It cuts right through the homelands of many different hill tribes. The region is very productive with cassava, coffee and tropical fruits, sometimes to the detriment of the countryside. Swathes of steep hill slopes are cleared for the purpose and erosion is very obvious.
We start our day at 8.30am with a cruise around Kon Tum. First stop is a Catholic church like none I have seen before. It’s one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen and Hero admits its the most beautiful in Vietnam. It’s entirely made out of beautiful timber. Even the roof tiles are wooden. It’s being lovingly restored at the moment. Kon Tum is home to the Bana people’s. we visit a traditional longhouse, which is an important community space for meetings and ceremonies. We see these beautiful unique looking buildings often up here in the hills. Hero explains that they are poor people and its only since Vietnamese have moved into this area has this town really started to develop into a modern city. Some ladies are thrashing seed heads on the side of the road. They are harvesting the seed of some grass to make a spirit that will be used for special traditional occasions. They also make rice wine. They show me their shed filled with ceramic pots full of fermenting product. What a responsibility!
Outside of town we visit a war memorial on Horse Back Hill. Its strategic advantage made this hill a centre of much fighting during the War and there are still bomb holes as evidence. Kon Tum was nearly destroyed. The Americans would come and go here from their base in Pleiku. There is an old American airstrip not far from here. The long stretch of bitumen is now used to sun dry cassava.
Magic Hoi is the start of the Ho Chi Minh road if you’re heading north. It is also where the road to Laos starts. The Laosian border is just 14 kilometers away. We coffee at the road junction on coffee made from Laos/Vietnamese beans. It’s beautiful. We visit another war memorial commemorating all groups of peoples who helped with the war effort – hill tribesmen, soldiers and women.
I eventually get to sample a small part of the real Ho Chi Minh trail. Hero drops me off at a point and instructs me were to walk to meet him again down the road. The trail is a narrow track of bitumen that passes through a small group of houses. Its amazing to think this was alive with soldiers and vehicles of war fifty years ago. I cross a small bridge wearing a few bomb holes before I take a walking track through the jungle back onto the road. Hero is relieved to see me pop out of the jungle, perhaps thinking he might never see me again.
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