Wandering deep country off the Ho Chi Minh Highway.
Location: Somewhere between nameless, misty mountain town and Kon Tum.
It wasn't on the map and it's just as well. Through sheets of rain I could make out the modest basics of any backwater that had decided to become a town for whatever reason: a post office and other government buildings, chained and locked, on the main road, with smaller roads winding off of that until they hit the edge of small plots of rice giving way to thick forest sinking into something even deeper and darker than that.
Already nearing dusk, I knew it was my home for the night. I found a little hotel at the end of one of those little roads and hung my soggy clothes anywhere and everywhere in my tiny room to get them dry as possible; I wouldn't be staying long. That decision was easy. Making it here was not.
I and my traveling partners, ' The Ridiculous Map' and 'The Blue Beast', spent a convoluted morning trying to find Highway 14B, aka Ho Chi Minh Highway, following locals' directions through small town after small town. The following were the best I was able to get:
" Follow this road for about 10 or 12 km, you'll see a small dirt trail, turn right on that and you should see highway." -- An 'Easy Rider' guide taking a tourist on the back of his bike to the tune of $70 a day. These guys make a killing in terms of Vietnamese Dong and for good reason; they actually know where they're going and what they're doing.
(These directions had me faring far better than what had become a desperately futile routine: stopping whenever I saw what I deemed to be a reasonable-looking character roadside, I would dismount the mud-caked beast, my absurd, bagged shoes slipping on the wet asphalt, holding up a finger for a moment's wait while I rifled through my sack for my soggy map. As he looked over the hapless map, bodies would inevitably muddle out of the woodwork, from shopfronts and various darkened doorways, joining my new friend. Brief arguments would break out with rapid finger-pointing ,usually in completely different directions, killing the little bit of confidence I might have had in my roadside sage. Eventually a scrap of paper and pen would be procured and a new makeshift map produced. New map in hand, and a large portion of the group still arguing amongst themselves and shaking their heads, I would be off again. Completely lost.)
With that I finally hit the main highway and began my course through the steep and heavily forested mountain passes the VC called home for the majority of the war. I was soaked through in minutes. Bristling with constant rain and murky cloud cover, this terrain seems especially unforgiving during the monsoon season. At a pit-stop in a little restaurant there was an old grainy black and white photo.
Shot decades ago, it pictured a European pushing his way up a stream in blinding rain, every other inch of the shot overflowing with tropical vegetation. Trailing behind were a few Vietnamese, certainly guides, hired for the journey. Despite everything, the man's face was the most stark and memorable part of the photograph. In it there was a tinge of fear, the healthy kind, probably what he came for, and a little crazed uncertainty glinting off of his eyes, but some sort of sick resolve accompanied all of that, set deep in the grimace on his face. A face that wasn't looking into the camera at all, but far off into the distance at the expanse that lay behind it.
The Blue Beast and the faithful plastic bag that kept my camera dry.
The cold, rain-drenched mountains sit in the background.
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