Jake Catlett Photography

Weekend on the HCM Trail

After being back in Saigon for a couple of weeks without a single free day, it was time for a trip out of the city! I called in to work, canceled the entire weekend and Monday morning, and a good photographer friend and I decided to head out towards the northwest corner of Binh Phuoc province, along a stretch of what was once an authentic part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The first morning was unremarkable, at least as far as photos go. It was grey and overcast on the way out there, even raining heavily at times, so shooting was out of the question. Normally you’d hear me complaining about that, but I was so happy to be out of the city, and so glad the weather was cool instead of blistering hot that it didn’t matter. We took almost the entire day to get out there, stopping often to hang out/take cover in rubber plantations and at little coffee shops along the way. Roadside coffee shops in Vietnam usually have hammocks in them, so I took a couple of naps, and my friend and I chatted about food, photography, women, and all the other things that keep our minds occupied. At one point I turned to him, almost thought better of what I was going to say, and then told him “you know… I’ve had this motorbike for over a year now, and it hasn’t once had a flat tire.”

“Why the f*$@ did you have to say that to me? Don’t you know it’s just going to pop out in the middle of nowhere now?”

Well, I try not to be superstitious. I had to tell somebody sometime, no?

We finally reached our destination, a little town called “Thac Mo”, in the late afternoon. Before finding a hotel we drove around a bit, and found a road which went up to a small hydro-electric plant at a local reservoir. We got a few nice shots of a guy fishing in the reservoir before cruising off to the end of the road and finally realizing that we were in a restricted area we shouldn’t have entered in the first place. Best to head back and find a place to stay before some pissed of army guys tell us what time it is… We checked into a rather nice hotel, walked around town a bit, and had dinner and beers in the restaurant/amusement park/swimming pool across the street, and planned out our morning.

I slept a bit late the next day (6:15), but one look out the window at the little mountain in the distance with mist wrapping around it got me up and excited and I grabbed my tripod and my D3 and ran to the rooftop balcony to get some shots without even stopping to brush my teeth. After getting some nice shots there and then going to eat our breakfast, we wandered around town a bit, and came across an old US plane that was owned by the South Vietnamese Air Force that had been shot down over the province. War detritus and memorials are thick in this region due to it’s proximity to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Everything in the area is so nice and clean and the area is obviously developing at a steady pace, if you don’t pay attention it would be easy to forget that it was one of the most miserable parts of the country during the war.

Afterwards we headed up the local hill top to get a good look at the surrounding area. Western Binh Phuoc province doesn’t look anything like other parts of Vietnam I’m familiar with, the topography consists of low, rippling ridges, not high or rounded enough to be considered hills even, and the reservoir can be seen from atop the mountain, with it’s long, thin fingers sticking out and curling around the ridges in the landscape.

After coming down we drove to find an access road to the reservoir. Reservoirs in Vietnam are generally considered militarily strategic zones, and so not surprisingly we couldn’t find access to the waterfront, but we did find some interesting rose apple and black pepper farms where we stopped to take some shots.

Driving around we came upon some road signs directing us to “Bu Gia Map” National Park, in a remote district called “Dak O”. After stopping again for coffee we were told by some locals that the park is very beautiful, and home to several different ethnic minorities. Enough said for me! We shot off down the road, heading 40km to a National Park neither of us had ever heard of. The first interesting spot we found, across the highway from the hydro-electric plant was a war memorial for 300 people that were killed by one bomb in January, 1975. Monuments like this are always sobering. It always strikes me the sheer numbers of people that died – basically every single town has it’s own memorial, usually with hundreds, even thousands of people’s names that died in the immediate area.

As we traveled further and further down the road, the road deteriorated more and more. After a while we came to a sign which said “Frontier Area”. Until recently all frontier areas of Vietnam were strictly off limits to foreigners, as it usually meant that the government was still trying to secure complete control of the region and compliance of the locals. But these days things are different, and we decided to go in and explore. If we got kicked out, well, at least we tried.

And it wasn’t 10 minutes later that my back tire went flat. My friend didn’t find it too amusing at first, but I couldn’t help but laugh. We were lucky enough to be about 100 meters from a bike repair shop (they seem to be everywhere in Vietnam), and we dropped the bike off and went on a short walk while it was getting fixed up. 15 minutes and $3 later we were back on track. We made our way through the small town of Dak O, and eventually came to a fork in the road, one direction, still paved, leading up to a town called Phuoc Long, and the other fork, just a dirt track, really, heading into the National Park. We followed the paved bit up to Phuoc Long to have a look, and found that it was the end of the road. Unless you’ve ever been to one of these little frontier area towns you can’t really get a feel for what they’re like. They FEEL like a frontier. Dusty, small, slow… you feel like you’re on the edge of civilization.

After yet another coffee break we decided to head back towards the park and see what’s there. Unfortunately as we came onto the trail we could see rain clouds off in the distance traveling towards us. We decided to head in anyhow, and quickly came upon a small village of people belonging to the M’Nong ethnic group. Due to the gathering storm clouds the light was awful for shots of the village, but we did get invited into a house and get some great shots of some of the local kids.

The park, being big and wild, and having big threatening storm clouds hanging over it would have to be left for another trip. But the discovery and the trip out were great… it’s amazing to me how after spending so much time exploring southern Vietnam I can still be surprised to find places so different and new to me just a few hours outside of Saigon.

The ride back to town was beautiful and uneventful… stopped for a nap in a coffee shop in Dak O, and finally made it back around 3:30pm, tired and ready for a shower. After a delicious, beery meal we hit the sack early, and woke early the next day for our drive back.

Along the way we made two more short stops, one at a large memorial in Dong Xoai town with statues and reliefs showing soldiers and the local ethnic tribes people that helped them, and the at the end of the highway we came across a simple marker that was erected in 1975 showing where the main path of the Ho Chi Minh trail ended and dispersed into many small supply trails going down into Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces, and eventually down into the Mekhong Delta to support the Viet Cong.

And that wrapped up our trip along a southern stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Back to the city, back to the daily grind. After several months in Laos, this was the first time I was able to just go somewhere with a friend and shoot for fun instead of doing serious work. It was a short, but fun and relaxing weekend, and I’ve got ideas for a much more extended trip out there again.

Coming next: RUBBER! Oooh oooh oooh, get excited!