Easy riding through the central highlands

Six days and over 800 miles of riding and we finally made it to Hoi An! That is a long way to go on a 100cc motorbike! Forgetting the fact that I no longer have feeling in either of my butt cheeks, it was an incredible trip to get a feel for how the people in the countryside of Vietnam live as well as to get up close to a lot of the battlefields and remnants left over from the terrible war that occurred over here. Our days were filled with riding through winding mounting roads stopping to check out waterfalls, old battlefields, minority villages and plenty of great Vietnamese restaurants.

As for the waterfalls, these were some of the most impressive I have ever seen. I can't even imagine what they would look like when the rainy season comes around. I don't think I have ever been anywhere where I have seen so many large waterfalls so close together. Drop after drop, each one taller and wider than the last seemed to keep appearing. Just when we thought we had seen them all, we followed a trail over a suspension bridged and were greeted by the most enormous of them all, Dry Sac falls.

After two days of exploring waterfalls and a couple of minority villages, we started to explore many of the different battle sights from the war. Sometimes, it was just a barren hill where the soil had been poisoned by the chemical agent orange that we dropped all over the place in order to kill off all the vegetation. It is sad to see that the trees still don't grow on this land today. That however is the least of the problems caused from agent orange. Everyone who came into contact with it has had deformed children. Those children our now between the ages of twenty to forty and can be seen throughout Vietnam. Even some of them who have been able to have children have had deformed children as well. It is a sad sight to see the affects of these chemicals that I had no prior knowledge of before visiting here. From a country that is so anti chemical weapons, it is horrible to see the affects and pains that continue to exist here today in Vietnam.

Along with the expanses of poisoned earth are endless fields where the local people continue to scrounge for scrap metal left from all of the artillery that was dropped throughout the country. The bomb craters can still be seen everywhere you go. Old sand bags litter the ground everywhere and all the farmers who now try to work this land are constantly pulling up more remnants of the war. We saw parts of old guns, shrapnel from bombs, old army boots and even a few bullets lying around. The other thing these poor farmers are still finding beneath the ground is plenty of land mines. It is evident everywhere you look. You can't go but a few hours a day without someone walking by with one leg, or no legs at all. Small children and adults alike are injured almost everyday throughout the entire Indochina region because of land mines and unexploded artillery.

To go along with the sad sights that the war over here left behind, Vietnam has also managed to destroy over 50% of their native forests since the war ended. It is evident everywhere in the Central Highlands where you can look at the hillsides and still see much of the land smoldering from the people still practicing slash and burn techniques. We road through barren hillsides with the occasional rubber tree farm for almost three straight days without seeing one bit of jungle. All I can think back to is all of my science classes talking about how fast the rain forests of the world are being destroyed and after traveling throughout Southeast Asia for four months now, I believe every bit of it.