Out: Ho Chi Minh Trail. In: Ho Chi Minh Highway.
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 03.04.08 | 1:34 PM ET
David Lamb’s terrific story in the Smithsonian chronicles Vietnam’s efforts to turn the former Ho Chi Minh Trail into a 1,980-mile “paved multilane artery” from the Chinese border to the Mekong Delta. “The transformation of trail to highway,” Lamb writes, “struck me as an apt metaphor for Vietnam’s own journey from war to peace, especially since many of the young workers building the new road are the sons and daughters of soldiers who fought, and often died, on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”
Government planners insist the highway will be an economic boon and attract large numbers of travelers.
From Lamb’s story:
“We cut through the Truong Son jungles for national salvation. Now we cut through the Truong Son jungles for national industrialization and modernization,” former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet remarked, as construction began in April 2000.
Lamb reports that “[m]ost of the 865-mile stretch from Hanoi to Kon Tum in the Central Highlands has been completed. Traffic is light, and hotels, gas stations or rest stops are few.”
The estimated completion date for the project: 2020.
Related on World Hum:
* Vietnam’s New ‘Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail’
* From Mao to Morrison: Why Are Travelers Drawn to Controversial Tombs and Celebrity Graves?
Photo: Public domain, via Wikipedia.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Paradissa Travel 03.07.08 | 4:02 AM ET
Very nice writing!
Thank you,
Paradissa Travel
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My Vietnam Visa 06.16.08 | 1:46 AM ET
The trail was not a single route, but rather a complex network of truck routes, paths for foot and bicycle traffic, and river transportation systems. MAybe the longest trail in Vietnam.
Steve
Vietnam Travel 07.14.08 | 2:03 PM ET
It will be interesting to explore this new road - I’m hoping to go up there in February and have a scout.
It should certainly make some areas more accessible but I would imagine the central highlands need more than just a road to trigger economic development - lets hope they get more than fumes and trucks thundering by!
jimdannock 08.08.08 | 4:43 AM ET
I found it really useful for those who are planning a trip to Vietnam.
Vietnam Beauty 10.13.08 | 8:11 PM ET
Each aspect of the culture, each detail of the nature and each Vietnamese people have all contributed crucial roles to making a Vietnam with a hidden beauty. Vietnam-beauty together with you explore the beauty.
wildbill34 11.19.08 | 1:03 PM ET
You can’t be serious. The HCM trail entered Laos well north of the former DMZ and terminated in Cambodia. There were side trails into Vietnam, but those ran west to east, not north to south. This is a fiction perpetrated on the backs of the indigenous people living in the central highlands and will result in destruction of some very sensitive environmental areas. All in the name of tourism. I hope people stay away in droves. Jon Dos Prados wrote a history of the trail entitled “The Blood Road” that includes extensive interviews in Vietnam with the men who built and traveled it.