Hai Van Pass to Cuo Lac – Welcome to the Jungle

The steep mountain road north of Khe Sanh.

Somewhere north of Hue in central Vietnam, I stopped for a snack of Vietnam cold turkey, checked the map and turned my motorbike from the ocean to silver city, pausing only to sell my soul with my cigarettes to the black market man – I was going to Khe Sanh.

Those of you who have the gross misfortune of not being Australian have probably decided that I’ve descended into incomprehensibility. In fact you’ve probably stopped reading. How rude. If you did grow up riding the sheep’s back through a sunburnt country though you will know I’ve been paraphrasing lyrics from one of the most iconic Aussie song of all time, Cold Chisel’s ‘Khe Sanh’ – a tale of a Vietnam veteran’s struggle to adjust to civilian life.

The battle of Khe Sanh was a 1968 Viet Cong offensive against an American military base. By the time the VC took the base six months later, around 1,000 Allied troops and 5,000 North Vietnamese had died fighting over a lonely hill of questionable strategic importance in the middle of the jungle.

As I rode north west from Hue through what had been the demilitarized zone between north and south Vietnam, the roads deteriorated. There are, I thought to myself as I dodged potholes and dozy buffalo, probably better reasons for visiting somewhere than a familiar song title. But the name that had been scratched into my subconscious needed a face.

            A day’s ride that began amongst the English breakfasts of Hoi An topped the bitumen splendour of the Hai Van pass and left the highway near Hue before ending in the mountains and mist of the country’s west. It was like an advert for motorcycling in Vietnam.

Outta the way dopey.

            Although Khe Sanh is now called Hu’o’ng Hoa, I recognized it by a huge monument to the battle in the middle town. I spent $6 on a damp room with a TV remote chained to the bed and a fan that didn’t work and began my nightly routine of hanging up drenched clothes. From a balcony strewn with drying bedding, I watched clouds scud over the treetops and listened to the afternoon chorus of birdsong.

Hu'o'ng Hoa's subtle, restrained monument to the battle of Khe Sanh.

Hu’o’ng Hoa is little more than a couple of streets straddling a mountain ridge with the usual assortment of mobile phone accessories shops, mechanic’s workshops, banks and a market. I wandered around for an hour before the sun set and found a little hill-top cemetery next to a muddy sports field full of shirtless kids playing soccer and buffalo grazing on the pitch. More than anywhere else in Vietnam I felt like a novelty as I smiled, waved and snapped photos. Mothers smiled at me and encouraged their kids tosay hello. Older kids giggled and hid. After an hour the rain started again and I decided that the town would be better enjoyed from somewhere with a roof. Since I left Hoi An and crossed the old north-south border, my few words of southern-accented Vietnamese had been useless so I found a street-side stall, took a tiny plastic stool and pointed at beer and noodle soup.

Mum cooks while her teenaged daughter serves steaming noodle soup in Hu'o'ng Hoa.

The bike’s old fuel problem had reared its spluttering head again yesterday and facing a long ride through what looked like empty jungle on my map, I decided to do something about it. Reasoning that my hotel room couldn’t possibly smell any worse, I drained some fuel into a beer can which I had fortuitously emptied earlier, pulled off the bike’s carburetor and sidled past reception. After having previous bikes butchered in interesting and unusual ways by untrained local mechanics, I was reluctant to let anyone near this one.

Using the bathroom sink as a parts washer and the writing desk as a work bench, I stripped the carby and found the problem – contaminated fuel had clogged the main jet with what we in trade call black shit. After a quick clean out and a late night test flog up Khe Sanh’s main drag, I was ready to go.

Early the next day I loaded the bike, fueled up and headed north. A few miles out of town I saw a sign for an American airstrip and turned into an empty, muddy parking lot. Beyond a low fence was a junkyard of military hardware patrolled by two barking dogs. A man in khakis yelled at the dogs and invited me in. Lining a concrete path were rusting skeletons of tanks, fighter planes and helicopters overgrown with weeds. Beyond them was a long red airstrip sloping down to a wide valley – all that was left of Khe Sanh military base. The wreckage of a small fighter sat next to a huge B52 bomber that looked like it could fly tomorrow. The airstrip too looked like it could still be used. Everything else was slowly returning to the jungle. Foot-long shells lay beside the path and the garden beds were made of more military scrap. According to the register in a small museum next to air strip, the last visitor had been two weeks ago. The book was full of entries from Australians – the most moving were from veterans. Besides racks of guns, the museum mostly contained photos of grinning young men and ripped-apart bodies, their captions full of dodgy English and propaganda.

A downed US plane displayed proudly at Khe Sanh airbase.

Back on the bike I was soon on a skinny concrete road bordered by jungle. I left the scattered houses behind and sped past a sign that loomed out of the mist. I was in Phong Nha national park with at least 150km before the next village. At the end of a cutting a muddy path led into the jungle. I hid the bike in the undergrowth and pushed into the damp jungle. The path became mud-choked and patterned with footprints. When I stopped the silence was complete and although I was climbing steeply I never got a view, never knew where I was. I tried to imagine what it must have been like during the war, straining your ears for a cracking stick or a clattering leaf that might mean ambush, studying the trail ahead for signs of a trip wire or a covered pit full of sharpened bamboo stakes. It made my skin crawl. I slid back to the road and was happy to hear the bike start first try.

The air got cooler and the corners tighter as the empty road wound through the trees. The mist lifted and I got my first view of unbroken, uninhabited jungle. With no rising smoke or logging scars it was a perfect panorama of green bush and blue-tinged peaks. Although only a few miles from the Laos border I could see the port of Dong Ha and the sea beyond – all the way across Vietnam’s skinny waist. Farther on the rain started again and I was once more in the clouds. The road became narrower and more overgrown and I hadn’t seen another vehicle for hours. I came to a landslide that had covered the road as it wound around a steep hillside. A bamboo fence blocked the road. Several motorbike tracks led around the barrier. Without enough fuel to get back to Khe Sanh I had no choice but to crawl through the rain and over the steeply cambered mud. On my right the road dropped away into the mist. I feathered the clutch and looked straight ahead.

Beyond the mudslip the road improved and I saw my first house. I have never been happier to be chased by a dog. Late in the afternoon, wet, tired and low on fuel, I limped into the town of Cuo Lac. I’d had enough adventure for one day.

The view across Vietnam, from the Laos border to the South China Sea.