In the early morning, we meet at your hotel in Hue city and drive to Aluoi for the Ashau valley, one of the strategic focal points of the war in Vietnam. The narrow 40 kilometer long valley was an arm of the Ho Chi Minh Trail funneling troops and supplies toward Hue and Danang. At the north end of the valley was the major North Vietnamese Army (NVA) staging area known as Base Area 611. Because of its importance to the North Vietnamese plan for victory, the Ashau valley became a major battle ground from the earliest days of the U.S involvement in South Vietnam. Our first stop is the old site of Ashau Special Forces Camp, overrun by the NVA in 1966 and the next site is the infamous Hamburger Hill, the last bloodiest battle between the U.S Army"s 101st Airborne and the NVA troops in the Vietnam War. The battle took place on Ap Bia mountain or Hill 937 in the rugged, jungle-shrouded mountains along the Laotian border with South Vietnam. After 10 day battle ( from May 10 to May 20 1969 ), the U.S 101st Airborne Division took the hill , US troops fought a brutal battle up the hill before finally capturing it on May 20. Due to the severity of the fighting, Hill 937 was dubbed "Hamburger Hill. We have 3 hour hiking on the hill and wander the hilltop viewing the traces left of the 10 day battle. Explore a tunnel of the NVA at the hill foot before getting back to the town for lunch. Drive back to Hue and trip ends at your hotel.
Here is A report on a visit to Hamburger Hill by Julian Silk
( Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julian.silk & Email: jsilk@infionline.net )
The following are some notes on my visit today to Hamburger Hill in Vietnam. I would like to thank Linh Tran of Viet Linh Travel for arranging this trip. I would especially like to thank Po Loong Mong for watching over me on on the Hamburger Hill range and Bui Ceng Huay for making such an effort driving me there.
There are two aspects of a trip to Hamburger Hill from Hue: getting to Aluoi from Hue, and getting up to the top of Hamburger Hill from Aluoi. Each is important, and each has different aspects.
The trip to Aluoi is interesting in itself. It is about 60 km from Hue. But this appears to be as the crow flies. The actual time from Hue is much more. The roads from Hue are paved, but very bumpy. So to make any time at all, you jump around a lot.
The roads also tend to follow the rivers along the way. Since the rivers coil and curve, the roads are full of hairpin curves. So it helps to have a relatively light meal before you go.
The roads are designed for people traveling on motorbikes. They are two lanes for the motorbikes, but really one lane for automobiles, of any size. Mr.Huay drove these roads about as well as they could be driven. There are compensations for the difficulties, of course. One of them which might not be apparent at first is that by being on these roads, you get to see the real Vietnam, not the cleaned up, modernized version that you sometimes face in the cities. This is how people really live in Vietnam, and it is refreshing to see it without the polishing and falseness and bowing. Since these are rural areas, largely untouched for many years except for the roads and modern communications, the people are very attractive and friendly. People sitting on the side of the road will wave to you as you go by, and you get to see the water buffaloes and the chickens and the wash hanging out, and the people talking and planting rice and going about their business. This is much more relaxing and refreshing than being made to feel nervous by people putting on a performance for you.
The scenery is also exceptionally beautiful. There are great vistas, which you see more coming back than going to Aluoi. These include very impressive and very steep ? almost frightening ? gorges near Cam Khe Nghe and Cam Hong Ha. I also enjoyed the river just outside of Thuy Xuan village, and how it is undeveloped and you can still see how people live. For long stretches, you see everyone with a cord of wood outside their house, and beautiful plants and flowers, including a tree with pretty orange flowers near Lang Minh Mang.
Once you get to Aluoi, you see a lot of things you do not expect. First, all the pavement is smoothed out. So it is like this semi-American suburb in the middle of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. But it also has cattle and goats and chickens in people ‘s yards, and a general sense of informality which I like: it is attractive and unpretentious. Once past Aluoi, you get onto a road of packed gravel. This takes you past several farmsteads, to a turnoff where there is a road of packed rocks that leads you up towards the hills. You get out there and walk up the road, past more farms, which appear to be primarily populated by the Montagnard people. The packed rocks disappear after about a half-mile, and the road becomes a relatively level dirt road. This takes you past more farmsteads, which have beautiful flowers next to them as well. You can play around with the goats, who are fun and very friendly, at about the ?-mile mark. The nature of the road is misleading, however. Once you get past
the farmsteads, the road becomes steep, and it gets quite a bit steeper as you go towards Hamburger Hill. The distance from where you are let off to the peak at Hamburger Hill is at least 4 miles. (It was impossible for me to measure it directly.) These are 4 extremely difficult miles to walk for many Americans, because of how steep the inclines become. Even at the 2nd mile, the incline is about 20 degrees, and in general, the incline gets much steeper as you go towards the peak. My guess is that at around the 3rd mile, the incline is at least 30 degrees, for an entire mile, and it could be more than that. This morning, we watched a truck take 5 minutes to climb 400 feet in that general vicinity, and you can imagine how this is for people. Between the 2nd mile and the 3rd mile, shade becomes scarce. So on top of this very steep climb, you are out in the open sun, and there is lots of humidity, too. No signs, especially in English, are marked, so this constant climb can be depressing. You feel it will never end. Thus at least this part is for experienced, conditioned mountain-hikers only, or those who can survive going slowly and carefully. I wound up at this point going about 500 feet and then resting for about 15 minutes at a stretch. (Of course, Mr. Po climbed up it like a mountain goat, and it was amusing and ironic to see some Vietnamese scouts, knee-high to a grasshopper, coming down the road with ease.) You should be sure to bring plenty of cold drinking water, and to carry the minimum besides this. I wound up drinking 2 full plastic bottles on the trip up and down, and I could have easily drunk more.
The difficulty may have something to do with feet size, too. Americans are bigger in size than Vietnamese and tend to have bigger feet. This is good for level stretches for the Americans: it enables us to cross more territory more quickly. Going up and down hills is a different story. You need to watch where you are going and make sure that the space in question is strong enough and solid enough to support your feet. Smaller feet make this less of a problem. So Vietnamese would probably have an easier time in this part.
There are two Montagnard shops in the 2-3 mile stretch, but these do not seem especially interesting.
At about the 3-mile mark, there are 3 sets of staircases. There are several Vietnamese groups, some of whom may belong to the Army (I could not tell and did not ask), working on the road, and a number of these road workers are working on the staircases. The bottom one today had not been set, so we avoided that. The other ones we used and they were helpful. There are also several culverts that have been installed, and a rough generalization is that these can be helpful going up, but not so much going down. The views in this stretch start to become very grand, and somewhat intimidating. You can see over the valley that you came on from Hue, and this must be at least 20 miles. The wildlife is also very interesting in this stretch. We did not see much in the way of larger animals. But there is a bird whose call sounds like the buzzing of an electric razor that cries out in this area. His call changes to a ?who-duff-it? and then radio static a little further up. Several beautiful butterflies also keep you company in this stretch. At about 3.25 miles up, shade starts to cover the road, and this is a major help. Once you get to 3.5 miles, you turn off the road, which continues past. There is a visible but unmarked trail that goes off to your right, and this appears to be the trail to Hamburger Hill. (There are no markings anywhere in this vicinity, either in Vietnamese or in English, so it is impossible to tell.)
The trail is like a regular American forest trail, at least at the start. One of the compensations it has is that it soon leads you to very lush vegetation, which is at least somewhat similar to the brush that was on the Hill when the Americans and the People “s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) fought over it. So this vegetation is rewarding to see, and is an attraction for people with an imagination.
At Fort Bragg, they told us not to grasp onto branches so that people wo not know how many of you are coming as they watch a trail. But on this trail, which is dirt and mud, you have a tendency to ignore this advice, because the mud can get very slick. Here again, the difference in feet size between the Americans and the Vietnamese works to the advantage of the Vietnamese. As an American, you can walk on it, but you do have to be careful and have a sense of balance. The trail leads out into a relatively open area. In this open area, there are some burned stretches of vegetation off to your left as you continue along the trail (you want to take the left fork when the opportunity presents itself). Not much grows in these burned areas, although there are some short plants that look like milkweed. It is difficult to know for sure whether these burned areas came out because of the battle, or as part of the Montagnard practice of burn-and-slash agriculture. There are compensations for nature-lovers in this area, including some beautiful maroon-purple mushrooms that you see just off the trail. Finally, you get over to the edge, where the terrain starts falling off. The view is stupendous: what looks like all of the Laos border-area from the Central Highlands to the DMZ, or Quang Tri Province. Of course this is where the Hamburger Hill fights took place, and it moves you as an American to think you are walking on hallowed ground. Again, there is nothing to remind you of this, and there should be. Some sort of cable-car system and setting up of a memorial area could make this more popular than it is, and it would be important for Americans to see. But there are virtues to it as it is. You do nott feel manipulated, as you can at the Khe Sanh Combat Base. By making such a hike to get there, you can see what the Americans (and the PAVN) accomplished, and you appreciate it that much more. Some final notes follow. There are mosquitoes along the hike up (and down). So malaria could conceivably be a problem, and malaria precautions may be in order. But there has been so much development of the area, so much roadwork in particular, that the mosquito problem really does not seem that bad ? if you keep moving, and do not sit or lie down for hours, you should be OK. Fluency in Vietnamese is a major advantage for this hike. It is not just talking with the Montagnard in the two shops along the side of the road. It is talking to the farm people, to the road crews, and talking in depth to the guide. The open nature of the area, and that there are no police or military officers watching over your shoulder at every step, could mean that you could really get a lot more than even just being at the peak by knowing what you want to see. Some of the remnants of the military preparations of the PAVN may still be there, and in this relatively free environment, if you know where you want to go, it may be possible to see them? a great educational aspect.
Finally, given the (relatively low) number of American casualties, it is unlikely that there are still any American MIAs whose remains are in the area. Hamburger Hill is a somber and valuable place to see on its own. It is one of the more valuable areas in Vietnam to see as a tourist.
