The Ho Chi Minh Trail

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The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War

Saigon will always be Saigon. Only airlines call it by its new name, Ho Chi Minh, and Old Uncle Ho deserves better than to have a temporary city name as his memorial. The Ho Chi Minh Trail is much more fitting. It is almost unmarked, flitting among trees and rivers and swamps. It is a memory burnt in the minds of those who live near as they lost and 40 years later continue to lose family to the unexploded spirits left so carelessly along the way.

Although great Vietnamese armies drifted South in its shadows, most of the trail also called Truong Son Trail was not really in Vietnam but in Laos and Cambodia. As the heart of the Vietnamese logistic system to supply the cadres and Viet Cong in the South, it snuck by the outside edge of Vietnam to hide from American bombers. It sort of worked, but it got pounded by every conceivable weapon except Nucs. Napalm, chemicals, thousand pounders, mines, and on and on. A generational tragedy but what part of that nightmare in Vietnam was not a tragedy

We were just in Cambodia's remote northeast province, Mondulkiri, on the border with Vietnam and the trip there brought back those war stories that as non combatants we could only wonder at people there. On a clear day, people claim they can still see the craters from the US bombs from one of the province's major hills that seems to have been a dump zone for unused ordinance. But it's inside the jungle that the menace lives today!

The Vietnam War and the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Its impact on Laos and Cambodia

Yes, Laos and Cambodia are very much in the path of the Vietnamese movement from the North. It is often bombed by the South Vietnamese and its US allies.
The Vietnam War & The Ho Chi Minh Trail - Then and Now
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The Ho Chi Minh Trail

Not about familiar trails

The Ho Chi Minh Trail is not about our familiar trails. This is not a piste, the clear air in a European autumn. This is a series of suggestions of trails, or less clogged jungle, or no trails that only people who have lived in these areas for ever really know of. Sometimes, you walk through paddies or paddle through rivers. Or you traverse hills and villages. But for the Viets, they know these interconnecting links well. They accepted the hazards and terrors as the cost of their re-unification mission. We were just in My Son, My Lai and Hue and we have some sense of the dense forests and unfamiliar surroundings many young Americans have to deal with.

HCM's namesake was the underground superhighway that won the war. Everything came down from the north of Vietnam to the south. This included weapons, food, ammunitions, messages, intelligence reports and other things associated with the war. It was so effective that it brought victory to the North Vietnamese army in spite of tremendous help the South Vietnamese forces got from the United States.

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When You're Visiting Vietnam

Go to the Ho chi Minh Museum

Learn everything about this trail in the museum in Hanoi.

Series of footpaths

In heavy forests

Looking at the terrain of these still sparsely populated valleys of heavy forest with few clearings, the trail must have been in the same series of footpaths the local people use to go through the forests to get wood and food and find their pigs who are free range roamers. We trekked through some of the heavy forest between bamboos and vines and you can get forever get lost without local guides. I don't think the North Vietnamese were thinking of military engineering as some would call the trail now. They were transporting as they had always done whatever they had to on their backs, sometimes in hand carts, on oxen and even sleds. And these paths, though primitive were used often enough then. They were more clear then, although not from the air.

Initially, these paths were really just for North Vietnam military forces infiltration as supplies could easily be transported through the river system until the Americans patrolled these rivers (Apocalypse Now!) and so this trail became the pathway for re-supply as well as the place of R and R for the North Vietnamese forces while their enemy revelled in Pattaya or Pat Pong.

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Where the Trail Started

Plei Can Village

Plei Can village and the start of the Ho Chi Minh Highway
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The North Vietnamese Army was a People's Army

The Pathet Lao support

ho chi minh trail 03

This trail really opened to become a major logistic highway when the Pathet Lao, the Laotion Communists, gave major support to the North Vietnamese army. The Pathet Lao knows the territory the trail uses through Laos.

We must also remember that the North Vietnamese Army was a people's army. Many worked in their fields and took care of their families most of the time but when needed to fight, they acted like the Americans in their 1770's independence struggle against the Brits. Put down the plough, pick up the gun! This included women and children, too. Everyone is a combatant.

At one time, the North Vietnamese, unknown to the Americans patrolling the rivers were transporting supplies by floating half filled drums which were then collected by nets at certain strategic points. Their army were the villagers so it was difficult to track those involved in the transport. Easier to find Columbian drug submarines but the same idea.

Another off and on success was the petroleum fuel pipeline assisted by small pumping stations that run from the port of Vinh in North Vietnam and then through Laos to supply the troops close to the Shau Valley in South Vietnam.

The Pathet Lao

And the Ho Chi Minh Trail

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The Ho chi Minh Trail

What's the Latest

The search for John O'Grady - A four part series
John O'Grady parachuted near the Ho Chi Minh trail, the mystery ... article Nassau 8/3/93 The witnesses 500 miles from Hanoi. Patricia O'Grady Parsels finds the place where her father parachuted from ... article Nassau 8/4/93 The lies They looked for ...
Nato summit: what next?
When public opinion so dictated, this theory was discarded and American allies in South Vietnam were abandoned but only after millions of bombs had devastated neighbouring Laos and Cambodia to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Horst Faas: A Last Hurrah
Back in April of 2005, about 60 former Vietnam War correspondents, with and without spouses, converged on Ho Chi Minh City for yet another reunion. It was the third such event since 1995, marking every fifth anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam to ...
Boys of Bravo Company become 'Bravo Family' - finally
That was our mission; to weaken or destroy the enemy that had been using the Ho Chi Minh Trail for years, to resupply their forces in South Vietnam." The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a logistical system that ran from the north of Vietnam to the south, ...

The Hmongs

The Tribes Who Fought with the Americans

On the side of the Americans then were the Hmongs who went out of their way to get the Americans stranded in the jungles of the Ho Chi Minh trail. They took care of the wounded Americans and protected them from the Pathet Lao and the Vietnamese. The Hmongs saved many of them that afterwards, the United States government repatriated and helped them settle in the United States.

Read more about the Hmongs

And their protection of the Americans

Solana Beach art exhibit sheds light on stories of Hmong tribal life
By Claire Harlin In the 1960s, the United States employed the tribal Hmong people to fight what's now known as ?The Secret War? in the highlands of Laos. And as the Southeast Asia conflict, which coincided with the Vietnam War, wound down in defeat for ...
Laos, Hmong Veterans Honored At National Ceremonies
?As part of the annual commemoration of the Lao and Hmong Veterans National Recognition Day Ceremonies, we are gathered to place flowers at the apex of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC,? Dr. Hamilton-Merritt concluded.
Highlights of Hmong culture
Census figures from 2010 indicate more than 700 Hmong live in Humboldt County. In his presentation, Lor said the director of the CIA during the Reagan administration credited the Hmong with saving thousands of US soldiers in the Vietnam War.
Hmong congressional candidate wants ties with Israel
The Hmong people are from the hills of Southeast Asia. They fought with the US in the Vietnam War, and were rewarded by being brought to the US, where they mostly settled in Fresno and Minneapolis. Blong came to the US at age five.

The trail was supported by the villagers

And they just got more creative as the surveillance intensified

ho chi minh trail

As the surveillance intensified, the North Vietnamese became more creative. They transported in the wee hours of the morning but also man-portered supplies in areas where surveillance was intense. Who would suspect a farmer carrying baskets of vegetables or fruits to the market? Who would suspect women or children carrying baskets of wood for fuel or cane for houses?

Our Vietnamese friend, whose seven brothers were killed in the Vietnam War, described how villages worked to make this happen: men, women and children all fired up by the same cause: to get South Vietnam back into the family. Some North Vietnamese friends were quite vocal about their complete mystification with their South Vietnamese brothers who did not want a united homeland. They have forgiveness for the Americans who they saw just as latter day French and equally bothersome, but they have difficulty giving these to their Southern countrymen.

The North Vietnamese Army

The Viet Congs

The Viet Cong 1965-1967 - part 1
by MadMax2k2 | video info

217 ratings | 504,935 views
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A history we want to forget

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The Ho Chi Minh Trail is still there

Many areas have been cleared for development

The trail is still there, remnants of a tragic war. Many areas have already been cleared for development and will soon be erased from the memory of the next generation. But if you walk along, slowly, the Ho Chi Minh trail tells its tales of horror and death in the Whispers of the bamboo and the sighing of the breeze in the vines. Perhaps Ho's spirit lives more here than in the cities of the rejoined homeland.

Understand the Ho Chi Minh Trail Better

Read about the Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War

Let these videos tell the story

Vietnam War
by tdavidbeckham723 | video info

2,098 ratings | 2,434,922 views
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More photos of the Ho chi Minh Trail

Take a look

Lao PDR Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) Media Trip by Cluster Munition Coalition
Lao PDR Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) Media Trip by Cluster Munition Coalition
Lao PDR Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) Media Trip by Cluster Munition Coalition
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News on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Some developments in the trail

The search for John O'Grady - A four part series
John O'Grady parachuted near the Ho Chi Minh trail, the mystery ... article Nassau 8/3/93 The witnesses 500 miles from Hanoi. Patricia O'Grady Parsels finds the place where her father parachuted from ... article Nassau 8/4/93 The lies They looked for ...
Nato summit: what next?
When public opinion so dictated, this theory was discarded and American allies in South Vietnam were abandoned but only after millions of bombs had devastated neighbouring Laos and Cambodia to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Horst Faas: A Last Hurrah
Back in April of 2005, about 60 former Vietnam War correspondents, with and without spouses, converged on Ho Chi Minh City for yet another reunion. It was the third such event since 1995, marking every fifth anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam to ...
Boys of Bravo Company become 'Bravo Family' - finally
That was our mission; to weaken or destroy the enemy that had been using the Ho Chi Minh Trail for years, to resupply their forces in South Vietnam." The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a logistical system that ran from the north of Vietnam to the south, ...

Links to Vietnam

Helpful Sites

Want some help in planning your tour in Vietnam? I have used this site and they can arrange for a car and a guide for you. They can suggest other transport, outings and tours as well as accommodation in other parts of Vietnam. They have on offer all the tours you want to take in Vietnam.
Vietnam Travel Landscape
Vietnam Travel Landscape,Vietnam Tours,Vietnam Hotel,hanoi tours,halong tours,Best Travel Agencies located in Vietnam,

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Walking the Ho Chi Minh Trail

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Ho Chi Minh Today

A Different Sight

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Angels blessed this lens

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You are welcome to leave some comments

  • JaguarJulie Apr 1, 2012 @ 4:19 pm | delete
    I know I heard a lot about the Ho Chi Minh trail, but never quite put it to words and pictures like you have.
  • Zut_Moon Dec 2, 2011 @ 10:34 am | delete
    Very interesting lens.
  • VKumar Nov 29, 2011 @ 8:45 am | delete
    An educative and yet very enjoyable lens.
  • aesta1 Dec 2, 2011 @ 8:49 am | delete
    Thank you so much.
  • LaraineRose Nov 25, 2011 @ 2:07 am | delete
    I have always heard that this was a terrible war and now that I have looked at all the videos and information written here I do understand it better. I am so happy that those who survived may now be living a happier life. This lens deserves angel blessings.
  • aesta1 Dec 2, 2011 @ 8:48 am | delete
    It was terrible but what war isn't?
  • darciefrench Nov 24, 2011 @ 9:37 pm | delete
    Ah, I always deeply enjoy your articles. I love how you describe locations like the Ho Chi Minh Trail with such passion and love. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Trails always :)
  • aesta1 Dec 2, 2011 @ 8:47 am | delete
    Thank you so much.
  • KonaGirl Nov 19, 2011 @ 9:18 pm | delete
    Aesta, my Cambodian friend, this was such a terrible time. It was terrible for us in the US as we lost our loved ones in a war we didn't believe in. It was a terrible time for the horrific conditions your people had to live through in your country as it was torn apart by war. In Hawaii, I saw many soldiers come in on R&R and listened to the horror stories. Many soldiers were damaged for life and cried in my arms. My own husband was damaged beyond comprehension. This is an amazing lens that you have created here. I believe it has taken great courage for you to do this. I am so glad that we have become friends through Squidoo and that you are alive and well these so many years later. I so love your sense of humor that you have manage to retain in spite of all of this. You are a brave soul, indeed. I am always so amaze with the eloquence with which you write about your country. You truly are deserving of the purple star. *Squid Angel Blessed*, my Cambodian friend, and I've added your link to My Squid Angel Wings to be featured in the "Travel & Places" neighborhood. Aloha!
  • aesta1 Nov 20, 2011 @ 9:57 pm | delete
    Am happy to be considered Cambodian as we really love this country and have worked here for many years now. We worked in Vietnam, too, and our first counterpart in the Ministry of Education lost 7 brothers but they want to now forget all these and move on. Thank you for the blessing.
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Your Ho Chi MinhTravel Guide

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Lonely Planet Vietnam Cambodia Laos and the Greater Mekong (Multi Country Travel Guide) by Nick Ray, Joshua Samuel Brown, Daniel Robinson, Richard Waters, China Williams

Lonely Planet Vietnam Cambodia Laos and the Greater Mekong (Multi Country Travel Guide) by Nick Ray, Joshua Samuel Brown, Daniel Robinson, Richard Waters, China Williams

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Lonely Planet Vietnam (Country Travel Guide) by Nick Ray, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Iain Stewart

Lonely Planet Vietnam (Country Travel Guide) by Nick Ray, Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Iain Stewart

Experience the best of Vietnam with Lonely Planet. more...0 points

Insight Compact Guide Vietnam by Andrew Forbes, David Henley

Insight Compact Guide Vietnam by Andrew Forbes, David Henley

"Insight Compact Guides" are handy refer more...0 points

Ho Chi Minh City & Mekong Delta (Footprint Focus) by Claire Boobbyer

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Lush green paddy fields, winding rivers and a crazy more...0 points

Utopia Guide to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar & Vietnam (2nd Edition): Southeast Asia's Gay & Lesbian Scene Including Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City & Angkor by John Goss

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Groovy Map 'n' Guide Vietnam (2010) by Aaron Frankel

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Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective) by Stein Tonnesson

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Based on multiarchival research conducted over alm more...0 points

The Timeline of the Vietnam War (World History Timeline) by Kevin Dougherty, Jason Stewart

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Eight million tons of bombs dropped. $145 million spent more...0 points

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Everything Happened In Vietnam: The Year of the Rat by Robert Peter Thompson

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Ride along on this breath stopping journey of the more...1 point

DAYS OF VALOR: An Inside Account of the Bloodiest Six Months of the Vietnam War by Robert Tonsetic

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LIGHT CASUALTIES: A Private War - VIETNAM 1968 by J. C. Willis

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This is the story of a young man drafted in the largest more...0 points

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SitRep Negative: A Year In Vietnam by G. J. Lau

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aesta1

Hi there. I see a bit of goodness in everything. I see world events in the context of the great things that happen, not the niggly faults that hound us... more »

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Ho Chi Minh 

Know this man

Ho Chi Minh: A Life

Amazon Price: $11.93 (as of 05/23/2012)Buy Now

Know this man and the history that gave the trail his name. This book is good in understanding the Vietnam War better.