A trip to the Marble Mountains is a standard stop on the modern Vietnam tourist’s itinerary. The mountains aren’t really mountains; they’re a cluster of five marble and limestone hills located just a few miles south of the Da Nang runway. Each of the craggy outcroppings is named for the natural element it’s said to represent: water, wood, fire, metal, and earth.
Over the years, villages have grown up at the base of the mountains that specialize in marble sculpture. The mountains have been whittled down over the course of decades, and much of the marble used for today’s carvings is imported from China. This has not slowed the tourist trade a bit. The village at the base of the Thuy Son (water) mountain has scores of stores selling intricate carvings of all types. Statues, jewelry, boxes, tables, chess sets, fountains; almost anything that can be carved from stone is found in abundance. The Buddha is represented in all sizes and shapes, while statues of the Madonna are available for those of the Catholic faith.
For veterans who served at Da Nang, Marble Mountain isn’t remembered for its stone carvings; I doubt if many of those were even around during the war. Marble Mountain was better known for the airfield built at the base of the hills. Complete with a five thousand foot runway, the facility hosted Marine and Army helicopter units for most of the war. Today, there is little left of the base: a modern four lane highway cuts through the old facility, and the beachfront property has been taken over by luxury resorts. A few of the old, half-moon shaped concrete revetments are the only sign of a once massive U.S. presence.
A long climb in the heat leads to the natural caves of Thuy Son (Mountain of Water) that contain shrines to Hindu, Buddhist, and Cham deities. I remember these caves as being off-limits during the war. The caverns were said to be laden with booby traps. We often heard stories of Marines wandering into the bowels of the mountain and never coming out. There probably was some truth to the tales; one of the chambers just a few miles from Da Nang Air Base served as a Viet Cong field hospital during the war. Today, the biggest threat to Americans comes from aggressive shop owners selling overpriced marble carvings.
Linh dropped me off at the Laotian consulate in Da Nang so that I could obtain a visa to visit Laos. If she hadn’t pointed out the consulate, I never would have found it on my own. The consulate was located in a non-descript building on a side street, wedged between some drab apartments. There were no security barriers, no guards, no national flag; just the name written across the front of the building in Laotian script. The writing was a mixture of curves and curlicues that resembled a child’s doodles.
Vietnamese citizens do not need a visa to visit Laos; they’re both communist countries with a long common border. Thankfully, since most foreigners obtain their Laotian visa before coming to Da Nang, business was slow at the consulate. The lady behind the desk was very nice; she smiled and seemed glad to see me. It was such a contrast to the stone-faced customs officials that I saw at the Da Nang airport.
The consular official didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Laotian, much less Vietnamese, so we conducted our business with gestures and short phrases.
I produced my passport, waved it in the air like a lottery ticket, and said, “Visa, visa, visa.”
She smiled and replied, “Forty dollar U.S., no dong, no dong.”
I hand over my passport and two twenty dollar bills and took a seat.
“No, no,” she said. “Maybe soon, maybe.”
I walked down the block, wandered around some shops, drank a cup of coffee, and returned around an hour later. She smiled, rubbed the thumb and index finger of her right hand together, the universal plea for money. I quickly got the message, handed over a couple of one dollar bills, and picked up my passport.
I was off to Laos in the morning.
TWENTY-THREE
HO CHI MINH TRAIL
Laos is a difficult country to visit.
This landlocked nation of less than seven million people is located in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula. Most tourists who venture into Laos fly into the capital city of Vientiane and visit the temples, markets, and museums before heading north to the ancient city of Luang Prabang, looking to take in its rich Buddhist heritage. A few continue on to the Plain of Jars, an area containing thousands of stone jars dating back to prehistoric times. The young backpacking crowd gravitates to Vang Vieng, a spot known for beer, drugs, and adventure tourism.
All of these attractions are found in the northern part of Laos, an area we knew during the war as the Barrel Roll. My interests lay in the southern part of the country: the Laotian panhandle, the heart of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the region we called Steel Tiger. Most of the combat missions I flew during the war were over the Trail, a sparsely populated area of triple canopy jungle, rugged mountains, and limestone karst. I saw it many times from the air, and now, forty-five years later, I want to view the Trail from the ground.
From roughly 1965 until the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973, the air war was waged over the Ho Chi Minh Trail—American fighters and bombers versus North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao anti-aircraft artillery. The goal was to reduce the supplies flowing from North Vietnam to the Viet Cong in the South. Each year, the traffic on the Trail increased and the defenses grew more formidable; the number of guns rose, as did the proficiency of the men firing them. By the end of my tour, the North Vietnamese had even begun to move Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) onto the Trail.
Reaching the Ho Chi Minh Trail takes a little work. Laos has a long border with Vietnam—more than thirteen hundred miles—but the area is so mountainous and so primitive that there are only six border crossings.
I wanted to visit Mu Gia Pass, the principal entry point from North Vietnam onto the Trail in Laos. Mu Gia was a choke point, an ideal place to block traffic and put a dent in the supplies flowing south. B-52 bombers, carrying ten times the load of an F-4, first struck the pass in late 1965, and the air-strikes continued for nearly eight years. Six years later, when I first flew to Mu Gia, the area resembled a lunar landscape. Bomb craters pockmarked the ground and the whole area was brown and barren; there wasn’t a living thing in sight. The Pass was heavily fortified with SAM sites on the North Vietnamese entrance. One border of Mu Gia had tall limestone karsts extending vertically, giving the whole area a post-apocalyptic look.
Today, Mu Gia Pass is still far removed from civilization. The region, part of a nature reserve, is remote and inaccessible. It would have taken me two days of travel each way to reach the pass. My best bet for entering the Laotian panhandle was the border crossing at Lao Bao.
On the map, it looked fairly simple. Nearly a hundred mile drive to the north along Highway 1, crossing the Hai Van Pass and skirting the ancient imperial city of Hue to Dong Ha. From there, another forty miles or so west on Highway 9 would bring me to the border.
A trip that would require barely two hours on an U.S. interstate highway ended up taking most of a day, but it proved to be one of the most interesting days of my life. This was my first time in the Vietnamese countryside in forty-five years. While I had found Da Nang to be almost totally unrecognizable, the rice paddies, farmers, and villages of rural Vietnam looked a lot like they did during the war.
My guide, Phuoc, along with our driver, Thanh, picked me up at my hotel. Phuoc grew up after the war in the countryside outside of Hue. His parents were poor farmers who had no allegiance to either side during the war; Phuoc said they were simply trying to survive in an area that had known nothing but war for generations. This was unusual—the war left few opportunities for neutrality. Most people were forced to choose sides.
Thanh, who spoke little English, bore a striking resemblance to Nguyen Cao Ky, the former South Vietnamese prime minister and flamboyant Air Force commander. Thanh seemed pleased when I commented on the resemblance; he told me that Ky is still held in good regard in the South.
We headed north out of Da Nang for about twenty miles to the Hai Van Pass. During my tour, we would usually latch onto an armed convoy
and cross the Pass on our way to medcap missions in small villages. Our medical team would spend the middle of the day treating patients, winning their hearts and minds, before heading home well before dark. The nights in the countryside belonged to the Viet Cong.
Historically, the Pass has been a major barrier to armies moving between the north and central regions of Vietnam. The Pass climbs fifteen hundred feet, crossing a spur of the Annamite Range. The road ascends in a winding fashion for some twelve miles, offering a beautiful view of Da Nang Bay and the South China Sea to the east. During the war, the route was mostly unpaved dirt roads cluttered with military vehicles and large fuel tankers. Breaching the Pass has always been a tortuous journey; there are numerous curves with steep drop-offs. Since the Pass is often covered with fog, accidents are common. Roadside memorials to accident victims dot the route.
Today, many people take the Hai Van Tunnel, first opened in 2005. The four mile journey costs less than a dollar and saves an hour of time, but it misses much of the splendor and beauty of Vietnam. At the top of the pass are the ruins of an old French fort, later used by the South Vietnamese, as well as some gift shops that would interest even the most jaded traveler. The view is magnificent; you feel like you’re at the top of the world, even though you’ve climbed less than two thousand feet.
Highway 1 going from Da Nang to Hue was one of the most dangerous routes in the South during the war. Military and supply vehicles would run in convoys at maximum speed, trying to avoid ambushes. Today, it’s mostly a two-lane road notable only for the hundreds of roadside stalls selling bottles of eucalyptus oil. The supply seems endless. Each vendor has dozens of yellow bottles containing the all-purpose wonder drug. The Vietnamese use eucalyptus oil for a variety of ailments: colds and flu, headache, back pain, and toothaches. It’s especially valued for treating fever in children. A dab on the forehead or chest is said to work wonders.
Eucalyptus and acacia are both non-native species that have been planted throughout the country. Eucalyptus is a versatile crop; the trees grow quickly, even in the areas denuded during the war. Giant factories (mostly run by foreign corporations) turn the trees into woodchips for export, while local farmers press the wood into oil. Today, the government encourages the planting of native hardwoods to increase biodiversity, but that’s a hard sell for peasants needing a cash crop. Phuoc tells me that the hardwoods take too long to mature. The local farmer who lives day-to-day is unable to wait decades for a return investment when the rapidly growing eucalyptus is a quick sell to the paper mills.
After lunch, we leave Highway 1 and head west on Highway 9 to Lao Bao. Both of these highways are major arteries that serve a multitude of purposes. They transport innumerable pedestrians, motorbikes, carts, wagons, water buffaloes, bicycles, small trucks, and cars. The highways also serve as a convenient place to dry rice. The recently harvested crop is spread out on the asphalt, covering anywhere from a third to a full lane of the road. A woman with a broom sweeps and turns the grain, keeping the crop in a discreet pile. The approaching traffic is careful to swerve if necessary to avoid running over the rice. No one seems the least bit annoyed or angry by the rice strewn across the road—this is a normal part of life in Vietnam, as it is in much of rice-growing Asia.
Phuoc assures me that we are staying in the very best hotel in Lao Bao, a town of thirty thousand located well away from the usual tourist routes. There is little in the area to draw visitors; this is a community that survives on the border trade between two poor regions. The hotel has a couple dozen rooms, nothing that would pass for serious air-conditioning, a duty-free shop that’s heavy on Scotch whiskey, and very few customers. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from the luxury hotel I stayed at on China Beach, but it seems more authentic, more Vietnamese, less Western. Phuoc and Thanh have been here before and are greeted by the staff as long-lost friends. They’re off for the evening and I settle in my room, amazed that the Internet has reached this deep into Vietnam.
The dining room at the hotel is crowded that evening with twenty or thirty Vietnamese soldiers dressed in immaculate starched green uniforms. Phuoc is gone, so I talk with the one or two soldiers who speak some English. They are members of an honor guard, headed to the Laotian border the following day to officially accept the remains of Vietnamese soldiers killed during the war and to transport the remains to be interred in a military cemetery. These remains, from the 1971 Lam Son 719 campaign, were located in part thanks to modern day GPS technology. During Lam Son 719, South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos in an unsuccessful attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The fallen soldiers’ remains are apparently both North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese troops—both are accorded proper deference.
The soldiers, mostly in their twenties, are honored to have been selected for the military escort duty. Like soldiers everywhere, these men drink heavily and talk and laugh loudly. I’m struck mainly by how young they are; they all were born well after the war ended. When I talk with them, they seem more interested in American music and movies than in the war.
It will still take many generations for the Vietnam War to truly end. Even today, there are regular reminders of the toll the conflict took on the men who fought and their families. During my trip to Vietnam, the government announced that the remains of First Lieutenant Donald Burch had been identified and would be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. Burch was twenty-four years old when, in April 1966, his F-105 was shot down over North Vietnam. Mitochondrial DNA analysis was the key to identification of the remains. Around sixteen hundred Americans are still unaccounted for, a small number compared to tens of thousands of missing citizens and soldiers of North and South Vietnam.
The next day, Phuoc, Thanh, and I pick up a fourth man before heading out to cross the border into Laos. Our new companion, a local man named Son, seems to be what could best be described as a “fixer.” He lives in the area, knows everyone at the border crossing, and will make sure things go smoothly for our gang of four.
Laos is a communist country, saddled with the usual communist problems of corruption, poverty, and human rights abuses of all sizes and shapes. The Vietnamese are also communists, but seem to be doing their best to become, if not card-carrying capitalists, at least cheerleaders for capitalism. The same can’t be said about their Laotian comrades. There were permits to be obtained, papers to be filled out, passports to be checked, and visas (for me) to be scrutinized. All four travelers needed to clear, as did our vehicle.
The ritual of it was hard for me to understand. Sometimes Phuoc and Son would call me over to a window and the customs official would examine my passport in great detail, leafing through the pages like they contained the meaning of life. Other times, they would tell me to stay in the car. I had the feeling that I was some kind of illegal contraband they were trying to smuggle across the border, that maybe I really didn’t belong in Laos.
The whole process took about one hour, but we were finally cleared to leave Vietnam. At the Laotian checkpoint, the routine was much the same, with one exception. Phuoc told me to place two one dollar bills inside my passport before handing it to the official sitting at a desk behind a glass window. The officer, dressed in a green uniform with red epaulettes studded with stars, opened my passport and deftly slid the bills into an adjacent drawer in one smooth motion without a hint of a thank you. Just to show that he was serious, he spent several minutes examining each page before finally adding the stamp. Every time I entered or left Laos, there were two or three windows to visit. Some required a single dollar bill, some necessitated two. I followed Phuoc’s instructions to the letter, impressed with the power of the American dollar bill.
Once we crossed the border, we headed thirty miles west to the town of Tchepone. Nowadays, it’s better known as Sepon or Xepon, but during the war our maps always said Tchepone. We passed houses on stilts with clapboard siding and corrugated metal roofs. Pigs, goats, and chickens wandered about, sometimes claiming the highway as thei
r territory; banana trees seemed to grow everywhere. Large swatches of the adjacent hillsides were partially denuded as locals practiced “slash-and-burn” agriculture.
The Tchepone area was one of the key centers on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a vital river junction and storage area. In early 1971, during operation Lam Son 719, South Vietnamese troops, supported by U.S. air power, artillery, and logistics, attempted to drive to Tchepone and cut the Trail. U.S. ground troops were prohibited by law from participating, but hundreds of sorties were flown in support of the mission, resulting in significant American air losses, especially among those who flew helicopters.
Unfortunately, Lam Son 719 didn’t work out as planned. The North Vietnamese decided to stay and fight, and the South Vietnamese, after taking the town of Tchepone, had to be evacuated by air. This was an early indication that our policy of turning the war over to the South Vietnamese (Nixon’s lauded Vietnamization) might not be working.
Even after the failure of Lam Son 719, the Tchepone area was frequently on our target list and remained one of the most dangerous areas on the Trail. The U.S. seemed to have an almost obsessive quest to destroy Tchepone.
And indeed, the destruction was almost total. We left the main road to visit what is known as old Tchepone. There was very little to see: An old French bank vault, around twelve feet on each side, sits on top of a small mound; nearby is the bomb-scarred wall of a Buddhist temple that locals say miraculously survived. The adjacent Sepon River bank is still pockmarked with bomb craters.
The four of us spent a couple of days driving along side roads, stopping and talking with villagers. I enjoyed wandering through a strange country, thankful for the opportunity to be a tourist in a place that rarely has any visitors.
I asked about the war, but no one seemed to remember much. It all seems to have happened many years ago. I talked with some men in their twenties who were working on a long boat used for river races. They have lived here most of their life, but their families moved to the area after the war. During my trip to Laos, I couldn’t find anyone who had lived there during the war.
Racing Back to Vietnam Page 17
