Saigon to Hanoi on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Vietnam

Just great report, keep on riding

:slurpWhat more needs to be said! Great report!

The credit belongs to CrazyCarl, with his sharp eye and ability to get the most out of his girls, er, models, er, photo subjects.

I seriously miss the food from all over SE Asia.

I love this report! beautiful photos and interesting comments

Great job Josh. The report and pics are top notch. I'm really enjoying the trip and seeing a country that I went to but never saw.

Khe Sanh

Well the Ho Chi Minh Trail West Route goes right past Khe Sanh - made noteworthy by the Khe Sanh Combat Base of the Vietnam war era.


From Wiki:

Khe Sanh Combat Base was a United States Marine Corps outpost in South Vietnam 16°39′16″N, 106°43′51″E (MGRS 48QXD850418) used during the Vietnam War. The airstrip was built in September 1962. Fighting began there in late April of 1967 known as the "Hill Fights", which later expanded into the 1968 Battle of Khe Sanh. U.S. commanders hoped that the North Vietnamese Army would attempt to repeat their famous victory at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, and the battle ended as a failure for the North Vietnamese Army. The defense of Khe Sanh became one of the largest sieges of the war and commanded heavy international attention in the media one of several climactic phases of the Tet Offensive. On July 5, 1968, Khe Sanh was abandoned, the U.S. Army citing the vulnerability of the base to enemy artillery. However, the closure permitted the 3rd Marine Division to construct mobile firebase operations along the northern border area.

In 1971 Khe Sanh was reactivated to support Operation Lam Son 719, the South Vietnamese incursion into Laos. It was abandoned again sometime in 1972. In March 1973, American officials in Saigon reported that North Vietnamese troops had rebuilt the old airstrip at Khe Sanh and were using it for courier flights into the south. Today Khe Sanh Combat Base is a museum where relics of the war are exhibited. Most of the former base is now overgrown by wilderness or coffee and banana plants. However, to this day nothing will grow on the airstrip itself.

In addition to the combat base, there is also a township of Khe Sanh - now renamed by the Vietnamese as "Huong Hoa"... but still commonly referred to as Khe Sanh, including in my Vietnamese road atlas in my previous post.

Here is an Olympic themed structure in Khe Sanh township.




A Vietnamese war cemetery:




Other than this there is not a lot of interest in Khe Sanh township - it's quite remote and there are a few cheap hotels, mechanics and small shops.

A few kilometres north of the township, the Vietnamese have constructed a museum with captured/abandoned American equipment:










Some old photos from the gallery wall:







I found some more photos of the old Khe Sanh here:
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/4867/oldphoto.html

Lao Border

The original Ho Chi Minh Trail of the Vietnam war days was a network of roads, many of which were in Laos, not Vietnam. The modern trail skirts very close to the Laos border.

I had my GPS going and found that the road marked on my road atlas wasn't always accurate. Here's the road accoring to my road atlas compared to my actual track from my GPS:



Also you can see from the amount of wiggles in my blue track, that the road here is has a *lot* of curves.


The view, about 300 metres from the Laos border
(I'm looking west, into Laos)




Same spot, a bit of Vietnam and a bit of Laos.

Virgin Jungle and a few Landslides

The road here, close to the Lao border was stunning - some of the best scenery I've ever seen anywhere

It was either virgin jungle or at least it had been growing for a long time.

When you cut a road through the jungle though, you tend to get the odd landslide. I passed two smaller landslides, but then I got to this one:



I ploughed straight on into it and hoped for the best :) Unf with a 125cc bike and mud about 6 inches thick, something in the drive train was making unhappy noises and I wasn't going anywhere.

When I stopped and got off I noticed that past motorbike riders had made a path across the drainage ditch off to the left, to the solid mud/dirt at the base of the rise, also off to the left. Duh, I didn't notice it at first.

Because the bike was already well into the mud though, it was a bit tricky to get it across to the solid ground. I had to take off all the luggage and lift it there using gruntwork.



After about 1/2 hour more gruntwork, I got to the other side!

I love the wide variety of smilies on this site

Don't worry - stopped for a coffee at least twice a day, then there was the coffee with breakfast and a coffee before dinner :) I should have gone to the plantation/factory though. Next time.

The Pictures and Story are Great Josh!


More please

Great write up and pics. Really enjoying the culture and many smiles. Such ashame our world has borders.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail continued
Around 17 degrees North

Some pics all within about 15km of the last landslide photos - really pretty

Lots of jungle:





The road - this is typical single lane (if two cars were passing, one would have to pull over) but sealed. And no traffic.

That whole 30 mins I spent clearing the landslide in the previous post, not one single vehicle went past me.






You can see the road and another landslide off in the distance:




And looking back the way I have just come, more jungle and a landslide over the road.




With all those landslides, you need a few workers to do road maintenance. Don't know what these guys were doing though, this bit of road is pretty good.



A bit further along and a stream near a village:


An isolated house

Awesome trips, great images. Thanks for sharing.

waiting for more...

This part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail is very remote - there are no hotels, no shops, no cars. There is a scattering of small villages - everybody here is Montagnard (ethnic minorities). The only Vietnamese seemed to be soldiers manning the many small army camps; every village had an army camp and there were a few in the middle of nowhere too. Remember this part of the trail is very close to Laos.

Driving along I overtook some people and stopping near their village, turned around and took this picture:




Here is their village:

A few short minutes later, this guy came out to say hello. Well I think he was saying hello as we didn't have a common language, but we shook hands :)




And a close up of houses in this same village.




Leaving the village and driving on a little further, some more jungle as far as the eye can see.