Dong Ha Mountain

I'm certain my map reading skills got us close. The Rockpile, Razorback Ridge and other unidentified hills are being leveled by quarry activities in support of building and highway materials.

Asking the old timers for assistance, we learned that helicopters used two areas northeast of the Rockpile. The area is under military control so we could not visit them. FSB Fuller veterans will have to examine the pictures later to let me know which name went with which hill.

I hope someday our U.S. citizens can learn to reach out with the curiosity and friendship to visitors I have experienced here.

Driving North from Highway 9 is a well paved road to Con Thien. Earth along the road is a familiar red color. I see teams of men clearing mines or unexploded ordinance between parallel sets of ropes. There is not anything like this in California! We pass orchards of rubber trees and strips of eucalyptus trees.

Then we turn off onto an old dirt road for the final kilometer. Off-road driving is possible in our Daewoo auto. Even if not feasible, we're doing it. Besides occasional bomb or mortar craters, all signs of war are gone. This, as they say, is a good thing. Considering the effects of Agent Orange, I am amazed to find so much vegetation.

Recommendation: Anyone ever attempting to repeat this voyage will do well to bring a GPS with way points preset before arriving in country.

Cattle are everywhere in Vietnam, both Brahmin and water buffalo. I see them being herded from time-to-time but mostly they are left to forage in fields and alongside the road. The horn works to shoo them, just barely, away.

Dinner tonight

At the Stop and Go Cafe, two former ARVN officers introduce themselves after the proprietor tells them I'm a Marine. Just like in our country, it is very important work to let them tell their stories. Both of these men spent 2.5 years in prison camp (what Tho called a re-education camp.) I learn that US government funded transport to the US for people with three or more years in the camps. However they made it, the children of these two are safely in the U.S. They proudly show off pictures.

Night time transactions

Tonight I make my first use of Internet Cafe. Getting there is interesting. Exiting my hotel at 10:40PM, I find the first floor dark and front gate (iron mesh, not a wood door) locked. A worker-bee is sleeping next to the door and gets up to let me out. He, as always, takes my room key. The street is also dark except for lights of a dozen motorbikes. I'm not in Saigon any more.  I proceed past two closed Internet Cafes. Continuing on the fourth side of the block brought two offers I easily resist from bicycle/rickshaw drivers, "You want lady?" I guess the world's oldest profession can even survive communism. My ten minutes of Internet time cost 1,000 dong - about 8-9 cents, US. One more offer to share a bed came on the way home.