Ah Yes! I Remember It Well : Khe Sanh

I wasn't even planning on staying in Khe Sanh.

But when I shared my brilliant plan to ride from Hue to Phong Nha in one day with some fellow motorcyclists who'd come from the north, I immediately got The Look from all of them.
"Zat iz crazy!" Gunther blurted out.
"Ja,"agreed his wife. "Stupid."

And so much for that. So a 2 day ride it was, with an overnight stop in Khe Sanh. Luckily, as it turns out. Damn those Germans!

The ride turned out to be quite pleasant, albeit longer than I thought (no big surprise there) and I didn't arrive until after noon.

Just as well, since Khe Sanh itself turned out to be a one street, shit-kicking town like so many others. Again, no big surprise.

But it would do for my purposes. I found myself a Dee-luxe hotel and prepared to set out for the next leg of my pseudo-nostalgic Vietnam War quest.

Hey - air con, wifi & a private bathroom - all for $15. Of course, neither the hot water nor most of the lights worked but beggars can't be choosers.

For a while, the combat base at Khe Sanh was the biggest story of the war. The 75 day siege made the cover of LIFE magazine and became the focal point of the American war effort. The Americans dropped over 100 000 tonnes of explosives in the area. The fact that it was basically a diversion by the Viet Cong hasn't affected its reputation at all.

As with all the other war-related sites I've been to, there are always 2 thoughts running through my head:
1. I would NOT ever want to be here or try to accomplish anything under wartime conditions. Until you actually see it, you cannot grasp the sheer impossibility of the terrain. It's mountainous or completely overgrown or both. Just sitting around would be an effort, but moving anywhere, especially laden with gear, would be a nightmare, and you could easily walk within an arms-length of someone and never know it.
2. All these places are so quiet and peaceful - eerily so - that it's very difficult to conjure up the fighting, even when the evidence is right in front of you. It's fucking spooky.

I'm not sure if the creepiness gets through in a photo, but believe me it's there, made worse in my case by the fact that I was the only visitor. I felt like a voyeuristic grave robber.

So, aside from my final days in Hanoi, this marked the end of my erstwhile pilgrimage. And just as well. Today as I was riding I realized I was categorizing virtually every mountain and valley in terms of its strategic value and potential mobility challenges. Time for some R&R soldier.

Next episode: Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey, Hello My Ho Chi Minh

FYI: I'll be "away" the next few days on a caving expedition, which necessitated filling out a waiver form and supposedly involves wading through chest high, frigid water, jungle trekking and rappeling.
What is the matter with me?