To Khe Sanh and Lao Bao

In the morning we headed inland from the coast towards the Lao border area called Lao Bao. It was from foot trails and jeep trails in Laos that most of the supplies and people came south along what was commonly called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We stopped in the hills about halfway to visit one of the bunkers left as part of the observation system related to the McNamara Line. It provided a clear view of both the mountainous border region and the coast, and for this reason was repeatedly attacked by NLF and People's Army units.








Oh, here are some cadres traveling now down the HCM Trail! They're actually workers from an area factory recently built traveling on what is now the Ho Chi Minh transnational highway. The government is rapidly expanding the highway system to accomodate settlement and economic development in the highland areas. Hence the rapid transition from the old bomb-cratered countryside to row after row of rubber tree and the occassional factory scene.


From there we traveled on to what was once a highlands base and airstrips for US Marines at Khe Sanh. This base fell unders eige as part of the Tet Offensive in 1968, and the conintued resupply of the base by air allowed for the Marines to hold it until July 1968 when the fighting died down. It was shortly thereafter abandoned. We were very surprised and happy to find the old dirt airstrip used to land thousands of flights of military cargo is now being put to use as a coffee plantation. Vietnam is now one of the world's largest coffee producers, so again some nice signs that war is quickly fading into the past here. While here, Darin negotiated to buy up all of the US military dogtags that local farmers try to sell to tourists to make a little extra money. Over 75% of them are real, and once back in the States, Darin is going to send them on to his Congress Representative to have them forwarded on through the VA Hospital system to those soldiers' families.