South East Asian Trips

Students of war history will want to visit the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which played a prominent role in two wars - it was used by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and by the Viet Minh in the war against the French in the fifties. The trail runs parallel to the Vietnam-Laos border and consists of a network of gravel roads and dirt paths.

For those interested in war history, the Ho Chi Minh Trail is a network of dirt paths and gravel roads running parallel to the Laos-Vietnam border. The trail was used by the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam War and by the Viet Minh against the French in the 1950s. Although the North Vietnamese denied the existence of the trail, and the USA denied bombing it, 1.1 million tons of explosives were dropped on the area between 1965 and '69, as well as massive quantities of herbicides. The trail is fairly remote, so there's been little in the way of tidying up: you'll see helicopters, fighter planes and a whole heap of other war junk. The closest town is Sepon, about 600km (370mi) south-east of Vientiane. Sepon was flattened during the war, and its now little more than a collection of shacks. You can get there by bus from Savannakhet.