Ramblin' Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail : Part 1

I rode my bicycle south along the Thai side of the Mekong early this morning with a tangerine sun peeping through the haze over Laos on the other shore. Soft, ominous silhouettes rose like sore knuckles behind the sleepy town of Tha Kek. These limestone monoliths forming the gateway to the Annamite Mountains loom as if placed there to ward off the curious and guard the secrets that lie behind them.

View from Nakorn Phanom

Today, I was to leave with an expedition team to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I would make this trip with Reed Resnikoff as driver and Nick Ascot and Jason Rolan as cultural liaisons and translators capable of Lao, Thai, Chinese, and Vietnamese. I speak French, the former lingua franca of the region and still spoken by many of the older people.

Reed urged "The Beast" (his souped-up 4WD Toyata pickup) onto a flat, steel barge leaving Nakorn Phanom for Tha Kaek following what we knew would be our last chance at a good hearty lunch. A tugboat nudged the ferry with Nick, Reid, and me aboard across the lazy Mekong and closer to those same dark mountains.

The difference between Thailand, Southeast Asia's emerging star, and Laos, Asia's poorest country, becomes apparent as soon as you crest the eastern banks of the Mekong. It's not only visual. The seemingly inevitable effects of a communist system — corruption, graft, bribes, fiefdoms, labyrinthine and amorphous rules, and little people with big agendas — stand ready to greet the unsuspecting and unprepared.

To understand this trip down the Ho Chi Mihn Trail requires getting the hang of a few basics. Try to suspend what you think you know about the Vietnam War and the following brief and simple explanation will make more sense.

The Beast

The Geneva Convention divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel after France lost the colony to Vietnamese communists in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. I was one year old.

Factions in Vietnam's north and south, at odds for centuries, couldn't agree on a communist or democratic government to displace the defeated French. Vietnam's division in Geneva was intended to be temporary only until they could sort it out with a vote. To decide on communism or democracy by vote would necessarily rule out communism because communists don't have real elections, a point that somehow escaped the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention made the Vietnam War inevitable unless the commies simply decided to go home and forget about it, which they basically did in the Soviet Union almost 30 years later, but this is Vietnam. Vietnamese seem to never forget or give up.

America's popular image of the Vietnam War, the one Americans got from television, took place in Vietnam between U.S. and South Vietnamese forces on one side fighting the communist Viet Cong. The famous battlefields, Hue, Da Nang, etc., ranged across an area south of a highly patrolled demilitarized zone running along the Ben Hai River which conveniently cuts across Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

However, the real Vietnam War was fought, won, and lost on the Ho Chi Mihn Trail in adjacent Laos and Cambodia. The Americans were not officially funded or approved by Congress to fight there, and they were not officially allowed by either the Laos or Cambodian government to have troops fighting on the ground. There is still a lot of debate about whether American troops were fighting on the ground in Laos and Cambodia. But the effort here was run secretly by the Executive Department, many think illegally.

By definition, none of the Ho Chi Mihn Trail is in Vietnam. The only way for North Vietnam to supply troops and weapons to the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army fighting in South Vietnam was around the demilitarized zone, or DMZ. To the east was the Tonkin Gulf, patrolled by the U.S. Navy. To the west lay the rugged mountainous borders of Laos and Cambodia. Laos shares its eastern border with (then both North and South) Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and Cambodia's border with (then South) Vietnam begins 100 kilometers farther down the map.

Old Vietnamese Army Surplus Still Abounds in Laos

At first, the Lao government, which at the time included a monarch, was either too disorganized or too preoccupied to care that Laos' next-door neighbors in Vietnam were using Lao paths and roads to help conduct a war against the United States. The Vietnamese people are generally aggressive and the Lao generally passive. They co-exist along the border towns today, the Lao selling produce and the Vietnamese selling that and everything else.

Besides, Laos had problems of its own, such as abject poverty and a decentralized government following the demise of French colonialism there. Laos had little or no interest in Vietnam's war and no solid relationship with the U.S. or anyone else. The Geneva Convention declared Laos neutral in the Vietnam War, although Laos never got invited to Geneva to have a say in the matter.

Not surprisingly, many Lao villagers were happy to help carry things at first in exchange for some money or food. The NVA, many transporting more than twice their weight on the trail, would have made very motivated employers So at first, the Vietnamese using Laos to bypass the DMZ was good for the economy. I use the word "economy" in the most academic sense. The people of this region are almost all subsistence farmers. Even today, it is a largely cashless economy.

As we headed westward the following morning on Route 12 out of Tha Kaek, the same diffused mountains one sees from Nakorn Phanom rose in majestic clarity above the flat countryside, painted sienna from the dust and clay. They grew higher, closer to the road, and more frequent as we approached the Ho Chi Mihn Trail until they seemed to lean over us.

Within only 15 minutes, Reed pulled the Beast to the side of the road for a closer look at what we had just passed. Under the rising subtropical sun, a group of seven or eight Lao men in high boots and headgear protecting them from more than just sun, probed the ground with metal detectors. The MAG logos on their bulky bright orange coveralls matched one on the side of a truck parked on our opposite soldier: Mine Action Group.

Mine Action Group Members Clear Mines

The group's leader, a tall, black-skinned man from Zaire said he had done this work all over the world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo. In his deep, friendly, and firm Cola Man voice, he asked us to please move along. He wouldn't say, but we guessed that they were working in advance of construction crews to prevent them from harm as they widened the road. We were still a good 75 kilometers from the center of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and only minutes from Thailand, yet the bombs still pose a threat here alongside a major public thoroughfare 34 years after the last one dropped.

Reed and Nick had picked our destination for the day, the Mu Gia Pass through a tall, steep Annamite ridge separating Vietnam and Laos. Vietnam is still tricky and expensive to enter, especially with an overgrown Toyota pickup that looks like it can get to hard-to-reach places where not everyone should go. However, the Mu Gia Pass had been one of the most active northern entry points to the Trail. We didn't plan to go in but, rather, ride to the border gate and just take a look.

On the way, we saw more people with metal detectors. In fact, any time we saw people off the side of the road or in the fields, a metal detector was always close by. Nick and Jason stopped to talk to a group of kids carrying some. We learned that many of the people we saw were not so much looking for bombs as scrap metal that brings 20 cents a kilo in Vietnam, more in Thailand. There's tons of it. However, collecting Vietnam War detritus is more dangerous than collecting pop bottles for deposit. It ranges from a few remaining downed helicopters and airplanes to guns, large and small, to paralyzed tanks and trucks to missiles, mortar rounds, and bombs, some of which still go boom.

A Kind Local with a Metal Detector Points the Way

Twenty kilometers before it would intersect the Vietnam border, Route 12 turns north at the inauspicious intersection at Nongchan and rises for 20-plus kilometers toward the Mu Gia Pass. The smooth, paved road winds and switchbacks around an unpopulated jungle valley engulfed in the arms of the mountain. The spectacular view reveals a deep green basin recovering from overlogging. Carefully sculpted against avalanches and mudslides and descending into the valley, the hills alongside the road reveal countless bomb craters. One reason few people live here is apparent: there's still a lot of unexploded stuff in that jungle. The only people foolhardy enough to go in there are the loggers, who often risk their lives for illegal lumber.

The guards at the Lao side of the border were resting in hammocks near the immigration office on the hillside above the road. We almost passed without noticing them until two of them yelled for us to stop. A kilometer of winding, windy, and empty Route 12 separates the Lao and Vietnam sides, but we could see a small shop, probably duty free, farther down the hill. When the border guards refused to let us go around the bend to look at the Vietnam side, we got permission to go to the duty free. Nick had a plan.

At the duty free, we bought a number of canned coffee drinks and a dusty case of Russian vodka for a dollar a liter to make some makeshift black Russians. We figured on the vodka coming in handy along our journey, not to mention being a good alternative when we couldn't find cold beer. The officer at the duty free saw us having fun and, as can almost always be predicted here, joined us.

Hooray for Communism's Access to Cheap Russian Vodka!

After a few drinks and before we had to take the party up the hill to the other border guards, the duty free officer said that, hell, we seemed OK and he didn't see any harm in our just nosing over to the border for a look. We paid our bill and headed for Vietnam, baby.

To be continued...