Easy Rider - Day 4

History lessons today...learned loads about the war from Loc, who served in the American Special Forces so is really knowledgable. The Kon Tum area was a major battlefield during the Vietnamese War. Went to Charlie Hill - a huge South Vietnamese stronghold before the VC conquered it. The air strip there is now used by locals to dry tapioca collected from the fields! They wouldn't let me go for a run...apparently there's still loads of mines in the area.





Stopped for snacks at this shed - fried bananas, apparently very common but I wasn't that keen. The custard apple was fantastic though. Locals that can avoid the mines still collect everything from around here to sell...sheds are filled with corrugated iron, fence parts, exploded bombs, barbed wire, bullets, bits of helmet, dog tags - everything!

Next we drove through "big jungle", where many of the soldiers lived and fought for days, weeks, and months on end. I think we would have been lost in about 10 minutes. Parts of the old Ho Chi Minh trail still exist - a track leading through the jungle used for many years by the North Vietnamese, and never discovered by the Americans until after the war. Pretty fascinating stuff.



The mountain/jungle scenery is fantastic. Unfortunately its started to rain so the views weren't as great, but it kind of added to the atmosphere, and reinforced how miserable it must have been to hide in the jungle.


We stopped at these 'modern bridges' (I wouldn't want to try an old-fashioned one), which locals still use to carry the tapioca they've collected back to the village. We walked gingerly over, trying to avoid all the gaps and holding the side rail whenever it existed...then we watched the kids racing back and forth chasing each other :)