[ARCHIVED THREAD] - The Ho Chi Minh Trail Today (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 2/28/2017 6:52:28 AM EDT
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Ho Chi Minh trail
A lot of cool pictures. Definitely of interest… to anyone who was connected-to the Vietnam War. |
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Ho Chi Minh trail A lot of cool pictures. Definitely of interest… to anyone who was connected-to the Vietnam War. When I think of Vietnam, I usually end up playing this song. "The Unknown soldier" by Carl Klang https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=yfp-t-s&p=carl+klang+pow+mia+song+youtube#id=1&vid=cb677a1c31577994117fe6f09147637d&action=click |
Wonder what good could have been done with all the money & lives wasted during that senseless war had JFK not gotten us involved? Billions upon billions of dollars and thousands of lives ruint and for what? Not a GD thing.  
I'm somewhat surprised none of those French bridges hadn't been rebuilt after all this time. I'm also surprised French or German companies haven't tried to enter the area for raw resources. |
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It looks like the most advanced technology these folk have is war deritus from 50 years ago.
Sad, telling but not really surprising. Another 100 years and they will be back where they were before the war but with even less since a lot of the war debris will have been used up. |
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1. I am surprised that folks are metal detecting for scrap metal when there appears to be so much just laying around.
2. How much of that stuff is still armed with explosives? 3. How did that "Domino theory" rationalizing US entry in the Vietnam war go? Oh, yeah: ------------------------------------------------- Eisenhower explained, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly.” This would lead to disintegration in Southeast Asia, with the “loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following.” Eisenhower suggested that even Japan, which needed Southeast Asia for trade, would be in danger. ------------------------------------------------ 4. As the saying goes, "Old men start wars, but young men fight and die in them." 
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Man! Sure are a lot of fishing holes in Laos! JK. Beautiful country. Have a visit to SEA with hiking on my bucket list. Yeah as someone else said, they do raise fish in some of them and they're used as watering holes for livestock as well. I've only crossed the border into Vietnam but I spent a month motorcycling around Laos and I've seen some of that area they show; I've been up to the old Air America airstrip in Vang Vieng (fun place before the Aussie's ruined it) and along the western border with Vietnam where the trail starts- it gets cold up in those mountains too. Even today it's almost ungodly to walk through some of those areas and see the massive amount of firepower that we dropped- we supposedly dropped more bombs on Laos than we did in all of WWII. And yet the people survived, hiding in caves which are still there or fleeing to areas away from the trails when the jets came. There are still some F4 pieces scattered about that you can go see as well as some anti-aircraft emplacements. There are sections of pillboxes and old bridge pilings as well. One thing they tell you is to stay on well traveled trails and that if you do run off the road, walk back along your exact path and have villagers come get your bike for you. Every year villagers and livestock as still maimed and killed by UXOs. There is on-going work there to clear it but there was so much dropped over such a large area and the area is often so heavily overgrown that it'll take forever. It's sad in many ways as Laos was originally an ally and we failed to support them so they fell to the communist (sound like any other countries in our foreign conflicts?). Along the rivers they use what are commonly called "bomb boats" but are actually drop tanks that the pilots would drop before before returning home. Here's a couple of pictures of some of them: 
Some kids being kids; the GoPro on my helmet would really get the kids excited. 
Ferry crossing: 
The KLX250 was a better bike than the XR250 I started the trip on. No need for a bigger bike, speeds are slow, roads are bad and the lighter bike is a blessing when you have to push it, lift or fix a flat. I've got more pictures on another hard drive back in the States The Laotians are probably the overall friendliest people I've ever met and don't seem to hold a grudge against the US, in fact almost everywhere we went (I was with my cousin for part of the trip) we would be invited to join them for food and drink, usually refusing any money but we'd usually go buy Beer Lao and they were happy. The kids are usually taught at least a little English and they'd try to talk to us while we "conversed" with the adults who usually knew very little to no English. You'd be amazed how well you can get along with a smile, pantomiming and just trying.  The food is typically excellent as well. US dollars are also accepted most places along with the kip.
It's one of the poorest countries in SE Asia still though and it's common for people to live in bamboo huts with woven bamboo mat walls. The have very little overall and water often comes from streams or if they've had a water project sponsored, there's probably a communal cistern. People will bath in the water spouts with their clothes on. The children go to school early in the morning and are out around lunch time to help work the farms; it's not uncommon to see an entire family walking down the road with a woven basket and a machete; dad, mom, and the kids, even the little ones. Much of the threshing is done on the side of the road so you have to be careful not to run over it or the people (it sucks coming around a curve and having your bike tires hit that stuff). When I hear fat people in the US talk about being poor it makes me want to slap them, they have no idea what poor is and yet like I said, they are probably some of the happier people I've ever met. I don't know whether it's because they are mostly Buddhist or what but they accept their lives for what they are. I've tried on several occasions to get a job there, any job, I actually wrote a proposal to teach men's health* and submitted it to the local UN and the local Red Cross but there's just no money and I can't survive on volunteering. If I were to win the lottery today I'd most likely move there and spend my time and money working on water projects and providing medical aid, that's how strongly I felt about the place. * There are some programs for women's and children's health programs but as the family structure in Laos is very traditional, the males do most of the hard physical labor and when they get ill and/or die the entire family suffers, but liberals are too stupid to grasp that. 
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It's interesting. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Some of those guns were used by people who were actively trying to kill my father. Felt like the photographer wanted the viewers to feel bad about all the bomb casings. I'm not sure if I do. Mixed emotions no doubt. Wonder how many villagers were killed by drop tanks raining down..... |
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Communists gonna communist. Quoted:
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I'm somewhat surprised none of those French bridges hadn't been rebuilt after all this time. I'm also surprised French or German companies haven't tried to enter the area for raw resources. Communists gonna communist. Never forget John Kerry went to VN to negotiate for the Families of POW MIAs and instead stabbed them in the back by taking everything the N Vietnamese said at face value. He did however,manage to get some contracts for his Forbes relatives to rebuild some of the war damage. |
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Around 1969 when I was around 23 and the Vietnam War was raging, I never could (and still haven't) figured out why a Communist in Vietnam was bad, but a Communist in Washington, DC or California was perfectly OK.
We didn't need to go halfway around the globe to kill Communist in some God-forsaken 3rd world nation. We could kill Communists right here in the US of A. Hell, the ones here posed a far greater threat to the US than those in Vietnam did. (Joe McCarthy was right, you know.) PS: The kids in those photos look OK. I thought they were all supposed to grow up with birth defects from the Agent Orange defoliant. Maybe the effects just don't show up in the photos. I found this: -------------------------------------------- From the beginning of the spraying 51 years ago, and even today, millions of Vietnamese have died from, or been completely incapacitated by, diseases which the US government recognizes are related to Agent Orange for purposes of granting compensation to Vietnam veterans in the United States. The Vietnamese, who were the intended victims of this spraying, experienced the most intense, horrible impact on human health and environmental devastation. Second and third generations of children, born to parents exposed during the war and in areas of heavy spraying hot spots, suffer unspeakable deformities that medical authorities attribute to the dioxin in Agent Orange. The Vietnamese exposed to the chemical suffer from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity and skin and nervous disorders. Their children and grandchildren have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam were devastated and denuded. Centuries-old habitat was destroyed and will not regenerate with the same diversity for hundreds of years. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles are threatened with extinction, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, causing dislocation of crop and animal life. --------------------------------------------- |
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It looks like the most advanced technology these folk have is war deritus from 50 years ago. Sad, telling but not really surprising. Another 100 years and they will be back where they were before the war but with even less since a lot of the war debris will have been used up.  Reminds me alot of the Appalachian folk here in the states: dirt poor. Communism sure did well by those people. 
ETA: surreal beautiful land, tho. Bad deal all around.
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I'm somewhat surprised none of those French bridges hadn't been rebuilt after all this time. I'm also surprised French or German companies haven't tried to enter the area for raw resources. My wife was in Laos a few weeks back, still a LOT of French influence where she was, French tourists, etc. The locals spent a lot of time bitching that their coal and other resources were all sold off to the Chinese though. |
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Mixed emotions no doubt. Wonder how many villagers were killed by drop tanks raining down..... Quoted:
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It's interesting. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Some of those guns were used by people who were actively trying to kill my father. Felt like the photographer wanted the viewers to feel bad about all the bomb casings. I'm not sure if I do. Mixed emotions no doubt. Wonder how many villagers were killed by drop tanks raining down..... Lots of villagers were killed by all manner of ordinance. You kind of get a sense of just how massive an actual B-52 strike must have been when you can't walk a straight line in an area because of all of the craters, literally, that still remain forty years later. Most people weren't communist, much less combatants, especially in Laos. You would think they'd hold some serious grudges against the US for abandoning them in their fight against the communist then bombing the hell out of the countryside but I didn't find that to be true at all as most were very friendly. In many ways they are more free than than we Americans are. As long as they're not protesting the government, the government leaves them alone, or more specifically just doesn't generally care about them. That's a two way street though in that they have no safety line, much less a safety net or as our generational welfare dependants have- a welfare hammock. Most people work hard day to day to survive because if they don't they starve and die; there's rarely any extra money for medical care and what is available is generally minimal and sucks. There's something simple and true about their lives in a way that most westerners will never see. Things are changing very slowly, but they still live hard lives, no doubt about it. |
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Around 1969 when I was around 23 and the Vietnam War was raging, I never could (and still haven't) figured out why a Communist in Vietnam was bad, but a Communist in Washington, DC or California was perfectly OK. We didn't need to go halfway around the globe to kill Communist in some God-forsaken 3rd world nation. We could kill Communists right here in the US of A. Hell, the ones here posed a far greater threat to the US than those in Vietnam did. (Joe McCarthy was right, you know.) PS: The kids in those photos look OK. I thought they were all supposed to grow up with birth defects from the Agent Orange defoliant. Maybe the effects just don't show up in the photos. I found this: -------------------------------------------- From the beginning of the spraying 51 years ago, and even today, millions of Vietnamese have died from, or been completely incapacitated by, diseases which the US government recognizes are related to Agent Orange for purposes of granting compensation to Vietnam veterans in the United States. The Vietnamese, who were the intended victims of this spraying, experienced the most intense, horrible impact on human health and environmental devastation. Second and third generations of children, born to parents exposed during the war and in areas of heavy spraying hot spots, suffer unspeakable deformities that medical authorities attribute to the dioxin in Agent Orange. The Vietnamese exposed to the chemical suffer from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity and skin and nervous disorders. Their children and grandchildren have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam were devastated and denuded. Centuries-old habitat was destroyed and will not regenerate with the same diversity for hundreds of years. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles are threatened with extinction, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, causing dislocation of crop and animal life. --------------------------------------------- The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam was not intended to hurt people...most everyone was ignorant of its toxicity...let along long term effects. A old friend of mine (long since dead of numerous cancers) was on Ranch Hand...he told us they did not dilute the stuff but were ordered to spray it at full concentration...he was Air Force and both loaded and flew spray missions. I would imagine that was a better way to go through a lot of it quickly making buying more and more a necessity and making Dow Chemical a lot of moola. It's effect on the trees in my AO was nothing short of incredible. Huge trees became what we called "cigarette ash trees" .... You could walk up to them and put your fist right through them like they were made up of soft dry cork rather than bark and wood. I had a huge branch fall on me one time...saw it coming figured I was dead. (as a kid I worked a couple of summers for the DNR cutting fire lanes by hand) I tried to duck it powdered when it hit my back despite it's size I hardly felt it. Freaky bizarre the whole forests that were sprayed...quiet and dead...no life of any kind....no birds, no bugs (except at night of course skeeters) no small animals... Like a nightmare forest. This was down in the Delta in S Vietnam The idea was to get rid of all jungle canopy so the enemy could be spotted moving any large amounts of men and munitions toward the populated areas of S Vietnam where they could then hide among the people and attack Saigon directly...I suppose. Common sense dictates that this was not a good thing for the environment....but it sure made a boat load of money for some people of that there is no doubt. |
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The "bomb boats" are really cool. http://www.laosgpsmap.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/boats.jpg |
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Very cool link. I spent a few weeks kayaking down the Mekong on Laos. Beautiful country and the rural people were about as nice and helpful as can be. I would like to make it back sometime soon. Not that it's our responsibility really - it was war I suppose, but it seemed a little odd that ALL of the UXO work was being done by Aussies and Brits. . |
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A former Marine friend spotted artillery and naval guns from the Rockpile. Can't remember if that was along the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. http://www.mydyingbreath.com/images/photos/rockpile_b.jpg Nope, The Rockpile was along the DMZ in Vietnam. The trail ran inside Laos at that point. |
| i find it ironic that Vietnam, like China spilled so much blood in the name of communisism that they are basically a capitalist society now. they, like many before them found out that grabbing a gun and fighting and killing is the easy part. Governing people is the hard part once you win. |