The Ho Chi Minh Trail Challenge

From war zone to a tourist destination. Phong Nha is lying just 100km away from the former Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and was once one of the fiercest battlegrounds in the country. In 1972 life was counted by hours! 

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was used by the North Vietnamese as a route for its troops to get into the South. They also used the trail as a supply route – for weapons, food and equipment. The Ho Chin Minh Trail ran along the Laos/Cambodia and Vietnam borders and was dominated by jungle. In total the ‘trail’ was about 1,000 kilometres in length and consisted of many parts.

 

The ‘trail’ consisted of dummy routes that served the only purpose of confusing the Americans, but was, in places, 80 kilometres (50 miles) wide. It is thought that up to 40,000 people were used to keep the route open. The natural environment gave the trail excellent cover as the jungle could provide as much as three canopies of tree cover, which disguised what was going on at ground level. 

The American response to this was to use defoliants – the most famous being Agent Orange – to kill off the greenery that gave cover to those using the trail. However, while large areas of jungle were effectively killed off, the task was too great and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was used for the duration of the war against the Americans in South Vietnam.

 

One way for the Americans to counter the Ho Chi Minh Trail was to build large bases near to it. From these large bases, patrols were sent out in an effort to intercept anyone using the route. Regardless of this, it does seem that the task was simply too great for the Americans. Whereas the trail was based on deception and fluidity, the military bases built by the US were static. Therefore, once patrols left these bases, they were by themselves. While they could be supported by air, there would always be a time delay between combat on the ground and the arrival of air support. By the very nature of guerrilla warfare, this gave the North Vietnamese the advantage as they had the ability to disappear into the jungle.  

We walked, or rather climbed and crawled, 11km (return) of this very challenging trail.

It was raining all day and the trail was very muddy, so it certainly was a challenge.

We swam 200m into a cave in our hiking clothes and shoes.  It was really cool to watch with our headlamps on, the bats inside the cave, swooping down to catch the bugs, hovering just above the water surface. We were very wet for the rest of the hike back to the road. We could not bring our backpacks with dry clothes, because we were required to wear our life jackets.  To add insult to injury it also rained a bit on the way back. This also made the hike very challenging, especially crawling thought dormer shelters, as the life jacket got caught - another interesting experience!

We tried to dry out a little while we had lunch, but it was still raining, and there was no shelter.

We were very wet and tired when we finally hit a warm shower, and we now fully understand how difficult this most have been during the war. Respect!