On the Ho Chi Minh trail to Saigon

I am writing this post sitting in a guesthouse in Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh city. I just spent the last 5 days on the back of a motorcyle making my way down through the central highlands of Vietnam. I'll back up a little explain this. In Dalat there is a group of guys known as the "Easy Riders." They started just after the war with 10 guys who would take tourists through the country on the ho chi minh trail from Hanoi to Saigon. Now there are over 80 men wearing the Easy Rider jackets in Dalat. I was approached in Dalat by a guy my own age who offered to show me around Dalat for less than the easy riders were asking. He told me he charged less because he didn't pay the fee to own the jacket. He had started a new company called "Free Riders." This is how I met Tien and spent 5 days riding with him through some of the most beautiful country side I've ever seen.

The first day we went around Dalat looking at local goods such as coffee, rice wine, silk production and a huge assortment of fruits and flowers. The next day we headed high into the mountains and came down long winding roads through endless jungle. We spent the evening near Lak lake and I roomed with four Easy riders who were there as well. The other tourists stayed in nicer accomidations but I really enjoyed the company of these friendly bikers. We ended up playing cards all night together. They taught me a Vietnamese game called Phom and I taught them Texas hold'em. Needless to say the odds were in the favor of the person who knew their game better. I won at poker and quit early at phom.

Over the next two days Tien and I road 350 Km over winding, bumpy, dusty roads through the highlands. We often stopped by the road to lay in hammocks strung up between rubber trees and drank sugar cane juice. The people of the highlands are of the old hill tribes who moved near the roads after they assisted the Viet Cong in the war. They were the friendliest people I've met, often waving vigorously by the road side when they saw I was a foriegner. In those two days I only saw two other foreigners.

The last two days we road the Ho Chi Minh trail towards Saigon. By this point I was driving the bike fairly often to give Tien a break and to enjoy the feeling of driving in the countryside. I won't lie though, I nearly was run off the road a few times by buses and government cars. I'd stop after these incidents, shaken, and look back at Tien. He would smile, looking back at the wild driver careening down the road and say "Crazy driver." He didn't seem to worried or flustered and said I'd done fine. I would often give him back the drivers seat for an hour or so after these events.

When i finally reached Saigon I visited the Cu Chi tunnels north of the city. These tunnels run over 250 Km over the area and were a vital strategy of the Viet Cong during the war. I went inside a few and had to nearly crawl to get by. My guide said "these tunnels for Vietnamese, not American. American to big." I watched a movie that was pretty unsettling. It was shot during the war and showed young women firing rockets at american tanks and then the going back to farming the next day. It is weird to realize that the whole country came up in arms during the war. Later I went to the war memorial museum and was nearly in tears looking at the brutality of war. I saw pictures of people covered in napalm or deformed by the defoliant Agent Orange. I saw a photograph that will haunt me for a long time, of a US G.I. holding up the remains of a man he shot with a gernade launcher. The whole time I just kept thinking that this wasn't about America being wrong but really just war was wrong. Millions of Vietnamese farmers died in the war, killed by both sides, just to fulfill a politcal and economic agenda.

Well, on that depressing note I have to go. I am going to be late for my bus to Cambodia. I've truly loved Vietnam and feel I have expereinced it in some unique ways. I hope all is well at home and I'll check in soon.

Namaste,
Adam