Da Lat to Kon Tum – Uncle Ho’s Highway

Dodging showers somewhere near Da Lat.

During what the Vietnamese refer to as the American war, the Ho Chi Minh trail was the name given to a network of paths and roads that supplied the VC with fresh troops and supplies from the north. It ran along Vietnam’s western border, snaking in and out of Laos and Cambodia. Some of the heaviest bombing and nastiest jungle fighting of the war took place along this route. In the ‘60s and ‘70s troops sometimes took months to trek through the jungle. Now, thanks to the Ho Chi Minh Highway, I was cruising comfortably at 80kph, leaning around rolling bends past tractors and water buffalo. From jungle hell to Vietnam’s best road in 35 years – not a bad effort.

Come to Vietnam. Get a bike. Do it now.

We’ve all seen the movies so we know how to describe this part of Vietnam - hot, muddy and mountainous with dense, stifling, tangled jungles, right? Well, maybe, but it’s also really… pretty. Jungle-clad hills flank fields and rice paddies, waterfalls burst from sheer cliffs high above the valley floor. Everything is green, wet and fertile. Villages with newly-thatched houses and yards full of pigs, water-buffalo and kids hug the highway. Every market is stacked with fresh fruit and vegetables, live chickens and Chinese electrical goods. In every field someone walks knee-deep in mud behind a buffalo or sits on a motorized rotary hoe which looks like an evil mix of paddle steamer, bicycle and lawn mower. People wave at me. Where is the desperate poverty and hostile locals I had been warned about in Saigon? Where are the dead dogs, flyblown kids and bomb craters? I’m not saying these people are wealthy – they're not – and maybe it's just the time of year that made the country side look so fertile, but I couldn’t help thinking that there are worse places to live – like Belgium.

Harvesting rice. Probably.

            For four days I cruised north from Da Lat through the bustling regional centres of Boun Ma Thout, Pleiku and Kun Tom, staying in $10 hotel rooms and eating fresh baguettes for breakfast and spring rolls with noodles for dinner. I especially liked Boun Ma Thout which sounds like a Scottish swear word but is a lively market town surrounded by low hills. In the towns along the highway I stopped for sweet coffee and endless refills of hot tea, pleased and surprised at my ability to communicate these desires. Despite months in the country my Vietnamese was still horrific.

Fishing near Boun Ma Thout.

            As the highway took me north and slightly west towards Laos, the hills turned into mountains and the farms into jungle. I began passing fewer ox carts and more logging trucks. There are still thousands of square miles of jungle in this part of the country and it is being felled at an alarming although predictable rate. Muddy scars appeared where loggers had torn huge holes in the jungle. Some logs were so big that one trucks could only carry three. The villages disappeared but occasionally I would see locals walking on the road. The men carried machetes and the women wore traditional long skirts and carried woven baskets on their backs. They were leaner and had browner faces than most Vietnamese. One man turned off the road and onto one of the muddy paths that I had presumed were animal tracks. In five steps he vanished into the jungle. At a tiny market cut into the trees, a woman sold vegetables and machetes. Dangling from a vine rope tied to her thatched shelter were three live animals that I didn’t recognize. The size of a big rat with squat, powerful bodies and short, grey fur, they had strangely human feet and a long nose like an anteater. I guess they were someone’s dinner.

A cloudburst over denuded hills near the Laos border.

            Hunting and deforestation has caused massive damage to an area still feeling the effects of American defoliant used during the war. At about the time I came through the area, a study announced that there were now almost certainly no wild tigers in Vietnam. In my time in the country the only wild animals I saw were a couple of beautiful white-furred animals that looked like big ferrets and one huge green snake. All of them were deep in national parks and I’m afraid to say that I accidentally ran over the snake. Oops.

I was told that the white, dead trees are a result of American defoliant. Birth defects here are very common.

            Despite having been bombed and shot at rather a lot by people who looked like me, the locals were almost pathologically friendly. For three days I didn’t see a fellow white devil or meet anyone who could speak more than a few words of English but I never felt lonely. In fact I felt like a rock star. There wasn’t a village in which the kids didn’t run after the bike screaming ‘hello’ at me as I waved, or a gaggle of girls that didn’t giggle as I walked past. Even the old men playing checkers with bottle caps gave me a nod. It was all very good for the ego.

            When I finally did see some westerners, they were on bicycles, which, as we all know, are for people who can’t operate an internal combustion engine. I was clearly the superior human being.

            Twenty miles down the road, I was forced to question that last piece of offensive nonsense when I ran out of petrol. As I pushed my bike through the jungle listening to the prattle of unseen birds, I prayed the bikists wouldn’t pass me. If they did I would obviously have to kill them to prevent word reaching home. Fortunately, before they pedaled to a grisly end I found a house at the end of a muddy path. A table of guys drinking morning beers and listening to booming Viet-pop fell silent as I wheeled the bike up the path. Someone turned the music off. They couldn’t have been more shocked if a giant octopus had landed in their garden. Soon they were all talking at once. I explained that I needed gas and someone staggered to his bike and began siphoning fuel into a coke bottle. I told them I had ridden from Saigon. One guy pointed to my bike.

“What, on that piece of shit?”
At least I’m guessing that was what it translated as judging from his mates’ laughter.

They offered me a beer and the thought of staying in the middle of the jungle getting loaded with these boys was tempting. Then I remembered the pedal-fanciers behind me. It wouldn’t do to let them catch me.

            I limped into the nearest town and filled up on petrol and baguettes.

            When I left Saigon, I had been worried about the fact that it was still rainy season. So far it had rained everyday but usually only for an hour of two, which was ok - I had learned long ago that God’s revenge for continually referring to him as a ‘beardy twat’ was to make it rain every time I even looked at a motorcycle. It’s just a fact of life - if I’m on a bike, it’ll rain. I had waterproofs, I had a helmet visor. I figured I could handle it. The ride to Hoi An would prove me wrong.

            Beardy twat.

The rainy season in full pique provides a perfect backdrop to this photo shoot. Not so great to ride through.