Into the south.

If anyone had told the young girl, watching grainy television footage of a terrible war in a faraway land that she would, one day, as a mother of four and a grandmother of five, be driving an American war era jeep through those same places she'd have thought you were nuts. Yet, here she is, driving south through Vietnam along, mainly, the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The old trail now forms the westerly road south, although it carries little traffic, as the main road runs east closer to the coast.

Yesterday was a gorgeous drive through well organised farmland on a route taking us alongside the Laos border- at times just a mile or two away.  The scars of war are everywhere.  The physical landscape is pock marked with old bomb craters, now just appearing as water filled holes in the paddies. Otherwise flat fields have grassy lumps where the soil was thrown up. We arrived at Phong Nha, a UNESCO World Heritage Sight and home to one of the largest caves in the world.  The deepest, and with the longest underground river.  The American's continuously bombarded it during the war, as they knew that local people were living inside it.   Huge chunks of mountain disappeared but they did not succeed in destroying it.  You enter, by boat, and the tiny oars women row you into the cave far enough to appreciate the vastness of it.  The entrance is tiny but it immediately opens up in a huge cavern of great beauty. I am not a lover of caves, but it was so enormous it did not feel claustrophobic. We spent the night in a little hotel on the river.  A haven of tranquility now.

Today, we drove through a national park, on the old trail, that has been turned into a fantastic road, paid for by Germany, and created just for us - or so it seemed, as there was no one on it.  For 50 miles, or so, we saw not a single car, just the odd moto.  On the whole road through the park, we saw only a handful of vehicles. It is a marvel of decent Tarmac, metal barriers,frehly painted white markers cutting a way through pristine jungle. It really gave a real feel of what a tremendous feat it was to create the supply line South through such inhospitable terrain.  

We passed a few small. Impoverished villages of stilt houses, so remote, one wonders how they make a living - although there is evidence of illegal logging.  Large scars of deforestation dot the hillside, and we even saw the chainsaws out in daylight - which tells you how strongly the law is enforced.  Mostly though, it is just breathtakingly beautiful.

Eventually we arrived at Kha Sanh, a pivotal place during the war.  It is just south of the Demiliterised Zone and was a US air base.  It became surrounded by the NVA in early 1971 and suffered several months of bombardment.  There was much loss of life on both sides. The Americans eventually withdrew.  The NVA claimed a great victory although the US version was that they had "withdrawn" and so had not been defeated. Sounds like a defeat to me.  What a terrible place it must have been.  It would have been a hellhole for the young G.I's based there fighting a war that they didn't understand in a country that they didn't care about and in such horrendous conditions. 

There is an interesting museum on the old base site now.  It is an eerie place, there are a few helicopters and a Hercules lying around.  On the old runway I saw goats grazing.  

There is a bustling little town here now and we are staying in its only hotel.