This changes my idea of shelter on Maslow's hierarchy of needs

We met Owen for breakfast and had the infamous pho that everyone said we would have at every meal and which we haven’t yet encountered. Ours was pork pho with big leafy greens that Owen said “should be okay” to eat so we did. Maybe what everyone meant was that we would want to have pho at every meal because our meal was delicious. As we were leaving Kon Tum we saw school children in uniforms on their bicycles en masse. They were in white shirts and red ties and Owen said the red tie indicated they attended Communist school and that it must be the first day of school. Children typically go to school for several hours in the morning and several hours in the afternoon, but schools follow the same schedule as workers and there is a kind of Vietnamese siesta mid-day when the heat reaches its peak.

Our first stop of the day was at the Cathedral of Kon Tum which was built by the French at the start of the 20^th century and is unusual in that it has clear windows rather than stained glass that look out over the lush green grounds. It is a wooden structure and the altar is in the center of the cross rather than at the far end. Whe

n we arrived a woman was in the confessional, which Chris later took a picture of, because it was so unadorned: a simple wooden chair for the priest on one side of a wooden divider and an area clear for a kneeling penitent on the other. The church is an active one and hosts a rotation of French missionaries and social workers who come to work at the orphanage attached to it, which mostly caters to the Ba Na tribespeople.

This was a long day of being in the car as we moved further and further into the mountains towards Kham Duc and Owen indicated that in this part of the country there were search and destroy missions during the war but less fighting than in other parts of the country because of the difficult terrain. Despite what we may think from basically every Vietnam War movie ever, most of the fighting took place in agricultural areas and not in the jungle. He did make clear to us that part of the struggle for Americans in this region was that they were allied with the South Vietnamese but there were, in fact, South Vietnamese Communist sympathizers. It was these people who joined the Viet Cong and supported the North Vietnamese Army using guerilla tactics. Because they were an unauthorized militia group, they didn’t have uniforms and it became impossible for the Americans to know who was friendly and who was not. The Cu Chi Tunnels—which existed long before the war because they were built to fight the French but were never needed—were then used by the VC.

We visited the Kon K’Tu village, the oldest cultural village of the Ba Na people. This was the most primitive of the villages we’ve been to and the people did not have electricity or solar polar of any sort. Some of these stilt homes are wide open and it is easy to see that while the people are sheltered they do not have any furniture inside their homes. Owen shared with us a common colloquialism here: same, same but different and in some instances I feel that; in this town, however, I could not imagine what life would actually be like. And I had a lot of time to think about that because Chris and I got lost. You wouldn’t think it was possible in a one road village to lose the way but somehow we did. We’ve been lost before: once when we were in a rented car looking for a finca in Yucatan, once in Oaxaca when a cab dropped us off at a deserted stretch of beach and motored off before we could get our bearings.

This time though there was nothing to be nervous about because the people in these villages have been nothing but welcoming and kind and we knew Owen would eventually come to find us. And he did, although we had already re-routed ourselves by the time we encountered him.

Along the roadside in the middle of nowhere are Communist billboards with messaging that roughly translates to “Everybody is one big happy family” and the image is of villagers, military personnel, laborers, students and police all standing together under the Vietnamese flag or the sickle and hammer. Owen suggests that this is to drive Communism home for the ethnic minorities who may live communally but have little regard for the political structures of the larger country.  Each of these villages has a

town hall and Kon K’Tu is no different. It is easy to identify because it is the largest structure in town and is two or three times as tall as any other thatched roof and it is the seat of the elder.

We visited several air strips, including the first at Rocket Ridge which was built in 1964 and remains today, an incongruous site: an airstrip length of pavement in the middle of nothing but vegetation. It was hammered during the war and fell out of use relatively quickly. The second we visited lasted the majority of the war and you can see where mortar holes in the strip were filled in with concrete. It’s kind of creepy.

We traveled along the former route of the Ho Chi Minh Trail which no longer exists because, you know, it’s 2015 and now Vietnam has actual roads, but you can still see tributaries where bits of trail run off into nowhere on either side of the pavement here and there. In fact, you will occasionally see two or three houses on a bit of the trail that doesn’t connect to anything at either end. Owen is also a motorcycle enthusiast and says there are stretches that are still passable by bike but they would not  would support a car. There is more of it to travel in Cambodia and Laos and we stopped for lunch at the intersection of these three countries. We had beef with fried noodles and Chinese celery. It was a good meal and my first encounter with a Vietnamese pit toilet which is a toilet seat flush with the edges of a hole in the ground.

Once we were back on the road, we were fortunate to see a roadside sign in English, Vietnamese and Cambodian that remained from the war, which Owen says are extremely unusual. This one said

“Entering Frontier Area” although only a little of it peeped past jungle growth. It is easy to imagine why so many of our soldiers were MIA; finding bodies in jungle so dense must have been nearly impossible. Owen says that it only takes three days for jungle overgrowth to reclaim its path even if it’s interrupted by something as large as a fighter plane.

The next village Owen encouraged us to visit we only got half way to on foot and had to turn around. It required crossing an old monkey bridge that has probably seen a lot of vertigo in its career and possibly has also seen some people falling to their death in the waters below and it was so rickety and the weight of humans caused it to waver back and forth so violently that no. Instead, we continued to Scorpion Falls, so called because the rock formations force the water to fall in a shape that looks like a giant version of the insect. Owen told us to watch our feet for snakes and that in this area in particular locals feared the two-step snake. He said it wasn’t true that you only had two steps of life in you after you had been bitten but that you didn’t have too, too many more than that.

We arrived to Kham Duc just before dinner time and met Owen at a restaurant across the street for a meal after resting up a bit. We had lau, a Vietnamese soup that one prepares at the table. First a pot with stock over open flame arrives and then while it boils other ingredients arrive: a plate full of leafy greens including morning glory and fresh herbs, a plate full of mackerel, beef, squid and shrimp, and finally packs of ramen. Once the stock has come to a boil, the fish and shellfish are added. Once it comes to a boil a gain, the greens are added. Once it comes to a boil again, the beef is added. Finally, once it comes to a boil one last time, the ramen is added. It wouldn’t be possible for all of the ramen and greens to fit in the pot at once, so this continues throughout the meal until everyone is done. It was so good, but I do appreciate how in our culture shrimp is often peeled before it is cooked so it isn’t necessary to do that while it is piping hot and making a soupy mess all over the table. Owen said to go ahead and just eat the shell but I couldn’t get past that crunch.

Earlier in the day, Owen had told us a story about his tangential involvement in the finding of the remains of a U.S. soldier who was listed MIA. A year and a half ago, he was on the same tour we are today but using motorcycles rather than a car and he came across a young man who was dressed in fatigues from head to toe (many, many people wear camouflage and/or fatigues here) and who rode a fancy Chinese motorcycle. Most of the bikes here are Hondas and left over from the 1950s so this man’s ride was distinct. At some point in their conversation, a “lucky” bone fragment came out, as did a picture of an American soldier’s dog tags. Owen and the young man exchanged phone numbers and eventually it was possible for Owen to meet the tribal hunters who had found a partially burned aircraft in the jungle near the Laos border and the remains of a body that had been thrown from it. The artifacts they carried with them as good luck charms gave Owen the information he needed to investigate the soldier and ultimately report the finding to the United States government.

As we passed through the place Owen had first met the young man, he thought he spied his motorcycle again and sent him a text asking if he wanted to visit sometime in the next few days while he was in the region. Instead, the man showed up to the restaurant where we were sitting after dinner. What a sight: he was still dressed in camouflaged fatigues from head to toe, including his bike helmet and he wore black combat boots. He was dark, much darker than the Vietnamese, and now I know this means he is probably from one of the ethnic minority groups in villages we have been visiting which would explain his involvement with the tribal hunters. He was small and sinewy and had a girl on his arm and he ordered 12 beers at once and an order of squid jerky that blessedly comes with a sauce so hot you cannot really taste anything else but it’s so chewy and hard that the sauce dissipates before your mouth is empty. Chris has, on occasion, been accused of being a drink pusher when we have parties, but only because he usually makes a cocktail and wonders if people would like to try it. He does not open beers or pour drinks for people and put them in their hands when they say no. This man does. Owen has told us that drinking with Vietnamese men is rather like a contest and now I see how this is true. He drank six beers in less than a half an hour and didn’t seem to understand our reluctance to do the same. As travelers, we do not want to offend anyone we encounter and we do want to honor local customs. That’s part of the reason I have now put squid jerky in my mouth, chewed and swallowed. These people are very generous and it is difficult to say no to them, but I had to keep turning the beer cans that the man opened and set in front of me around and back towards him. Eventually, we were able to pull ourselves away and head back to the hotel for bed when we promised we would have breakfast with the man in the morning. To be clear, he spoke no English so it was only being near us that was the thrill. And truth told, it was kind of a thrill for us, too.