In the early 2000, the Communist government in Hanoi decided to construct a highway, the Ho Chi Minh Highway, along the Truong Son Range to connect North Vietnam with South Vietnam, parallel to the existing Highway 1 in the coastal areas of Central Vietnam. The construction is going on, and would be completed in four years if everything goes as planned.
Prompted by tales of the formidable Ho Chi Minh Trail, many journalists and observers outside Vietnam quickly adopt the false notion that the new highway is built on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, or the Trail is reborn and rebuilt as Ho Chi Minh Highway, without giving it a second thought.
In fact, the old trail and the new highway ARE NOT AT THE SAME LOCATION BUT MILES APART.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a complex of parallel truck routes and foot paths.
Most truck routes were dirt roads, some important portions were paved with rock and pebbles. All of them were in the territory of Laos and not a bit of it touched the Vietnamese soil except for the first part of about 50 kilometers from the starting points.
Most convoys departed at three major loading areas inside North Vietnam’s panhandle region and began their journey by heading to the Laotian borders, following the three paved highways built before 1945 by the French colonialist authorities in Indochina. All the three roads connect the Vietnam’s provinces of Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Quang Binh with the Laotian road network across the common border.
On April 5, 2000, Hanoi government held the ground breaking ceremony at a ferry harbor in Quang Binh province, to launch the construction of the Ho Chi Minh Highway. The Xuan Son ferry harbor was one of the three starting points of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the southernmost part of North Vietnam, close to the 17th Parallel - see the map below).
After a short distance into Laos, the trucks headed southward on the routes along the border. Most of the routes are a few kilometers away from the border. Far away to the south, the distance may be up to more than 100 kilometers, deep into Cambodia. The truck routes extended as far as to Sihanoukville, or Konpong Som, the Cambodian port city on the Gulf of Thailand. Military supplies also came from North Vietnam and China to this port to be forwarded to secret bases inside Cambodia, supporting VC units in South Vietnam. Therefore, the southern portion of the system was called Sihanouk Trail.
Footpaths made up another system that intertwined with truck routes. On those footpaths, North Vietnamese combat units moved on foot from many starting points in areas just north of the Demilitarized Zone into Laos before infiltrating South Vietnam. Supplies, especially during the first few years of the war, were also transported to the South by "dan cong" (civilian labors) on backpacks and mostly on bicycles led by porters' hands.
Footpaths also extended logistical lines from truck routes. Military supplies were unloaded from trucks at many sites along the truck routes and carried by porters on backpacks or on bicycles across border into South Vietnamese soil.
Like truck routes, footpaths run mostly on Laotian territory parallel with the border. Only segments of the paths were in South Vietnam no-man's borderland areas west of Kontum, Pleiku, Ban Me Thuot... down to Tay Ninh.
Footpath network branched off to the east at many places, leading supplies and troops to logistical bases set up inside South Vietnam. Some were located as far as 50 kilometers from the border, deep into the jungles of Central Vietnam provinces.
The under-construction highway, Ho Chi Minh Highway, is of a completely different story. It is built entirely inside Vietnam parallel to the border but not the smallest bit of it is on any segment of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, truck routes or footpaths. The new highway intersects with dozen of branched footpaths but runs far away from the Trail and the border.
Continuous information at: http://www.activetravelvietnam.com/
