Blood Road Page #2

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to overcome

barriers among people,

to connect

their hearts and souls

so they can

understand each other.

Happy New Year.

making all this food. It's beautiful.

Huyen's father and my father

indirectly fought

each other in the war,

and it's extraordinary,

more than 40 years later,

that we can all sit down

at the dinner table

and share a meal together.

Cheers. Happy New Year,

Happy New Year.

RUSCH:
To a good journey. Yeah.

(GLASSES CLINK)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

RUSCH:
Our last major

challenge before starting

is mapping out the trail

and trying to make sense

of the complex route.

Don Duvall is an American

living in Laos.

He has spent most of his life

exploring and mapping

the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

He is an essential part

of our expedition because

he has really helped create

the most historically

accurate route for us to take.

DUVALL:
My background is

navigating sailing yachts

around the world

for almost 15 years,

and then I came

to Laos and started

map-making and surveying

on a motorcycle

on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

My role here with Rebecca's team

is to help them with navigation,

provide GPS maps and local

knowledge and information.

Where we can camp,

what rivers we can go across.

I'm gonna assist them

as a guide,

and also with navigation.

(PEOPLE CHUCKLE)

DUVALL:
Yeah. Explaining to

the ladies about the trail,

honestly, I was a bit skeptical.

I've been riding up and down.

There are tough places.

No one's ever taken a bike

and done the full thing

from start to finish.

RUSCH:
First off, the

mileage is off the charts.

We are attempting to ride

more than 1200 miles

of unknown terrain.

It should take

about three weeks.

And to top it all off,

we're trying to find

a more than

40-year-old crash site

in the middle

of the dense jungle.

DUVALL:
The site was already excavated.

It's a large area to search,

a lot of jungle.

There'd be

a very small possibility

of any evidence of

the actual crash itself.

The idea is,

you know, we'll have

these guys

in a small support rig

that we'll meet

at certain points along the way.

DUVALL:
That's gonna take planning.

RUSCH:
We're gonna sit down with...

There's places

your bicycle can go

that they won't be able to.

There'll be leap frogs.

In between those places,

we need to be

totally self-sufficient

for bike maintenance,

whatever might

come our way, so...

Yeah, there'll be

some leap-frogging.

We have a little work to do

to actually look

at your whole route

and make a master plan

for the weeks ahead.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

RUSCH:
Yeah, easier. Yeah.

We can grind down

the shoe a little bit.

The watts down here.

All right.

Zero watts right now.

And then this screen over here's

got my little map on there.

RUSCH:
My experience as a

professional athlete, you know.

Get from point A to B

as fast as humanly possible.

And this is a little different.

So for this ride,

we're a team, okay?

We are a team.

I will always be beside you.

Okay.

RUSCH:
I'm riding with a picture

of my father in my backpack.

And before

we started our journey,

I really wanted

to share with Huyen

that my reason

for being here is for him.

It's not really about me.

It's to honor his memory.

So I wanted to bring her in

and really help her

understand why I'm here.

Ready? Okay.

NGUYEN:
(IN VIETNAMESE) In the past,

I would imagine a U.S. soldier

dropping bombs

to kill my compatriots.

I had never thought of

her father

in the photograph

as an actual person.

I thought that he was

just one of war's victims.

Just like Rebecca's family.

RUSCH:
After years of preparation,

I'm nervous.

I don't know what

we're gonna find out there,

or whether or not we'll even

find my father's crash site.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

NARRATOR:
The Ho Chi Minh Trail

is a 10,000-mile-long network

of interconnected

paths and roads

crisscrossing the dense jungles

and rugged mountains

of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The trail, named for Vietnamese

communist leader Ho Chi Minh,

was primarily used to secretly

move military troops

and supplies

during times of conflict...

most notably during the war

with the United States

from 1964 to 1975.

At that time,

a treaty temporarily

split Vietnam

into two countries...

North and South Vietnam.

The communist North sought

to reunite the South,

but the U.S. government

feared the Domino Theory,

which could lead

to other communist takeovers

within the region.

In order to help South Vietnam

fight off the North

and the spread of communism,

the U.S. sent arms,

aid, and eventually troops.

The North Vietnamese knew

the Americans

had superior firepower,

so they resorted

to guerrilla warfare tactics,

while secretly

transporting supplies

on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Initially, the North Vietnamese

primarily used bicycles, troops,

and even elephants to move

supplies along the trail.

But as the war intensified,

they realized

the trail needed to expand.

my father tell about the war.

The bomb

on Kham Thien Street in 1972.

At that time

my father, every day,

he go to Kham Thien Street

and collect a lot of bodies

of many, many people,

everywhere.

And in my garden,

there's a big hole.

Now, there's still a hole?

NGUYEN:
Hole from bomb.

RUSCH:
Why didn't he put dirt

in the hole, to make it go away?

Because many fish live there.

The fish live in the bomb hole?

Yes.

In the crater.

RUSCH:
You know, that same year, 1972,

is the same year my father died.

My...

Yeah, your father died.

'72.

You need more food

to take with you?

No. No,

it's enough.

You have enough, okay.

RUSCH:
It could go nose down more.

MAN:
Yeah.

It's a vegetable.

Very good for health.

Very good.

So you're back

a little less than a centimeter.

All right, thank you, guys.

MARTIN:
All right.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

RUSCH:
Okay. Let's go.

How do I say it in...?

(NGUYEN TRANSLATES

INTO VIETNAMESE)

BAUER:
I'm guessing we can

probably catch them at 40K.

And then another 864 hours.

(HORN HONKS)

Whoo!

It's a head.

That's a head.

Do people eat the eyeballs?

Yes.

Yeah?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Here?

Excuse me?

Hello?

Excuse me?

(SPEAKS VIETNAMESE)

Oh, this one. Okay.

(SCOFFS)

RUSCH:
There's not really

a line system here.

Oh, where's my passport?

Where's yours?

Make sure nobody has it.

Excuse me?

My passport.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Thank you.

RUSCH:
As soon as we crossed the border

into Laos, I felt different.

It was really cool

to just look around

and soak in the atmosphere

and feel like I was finally

moving closer to my goal.

Instead of just thinking about

it and dreaming about it,

I was actually doing it

and making progress.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

NGUYEN:
(IN VIETNAMESE) So far, the

biggest challenge to me is my stamina.

And the thing I worry about

the most,

that I ponder a lot about,

it's how to become

a real friend to Rebecca.

MAN:
(AS STEPHEN)

"Dear Judy, Sharon and Becky,

"I'm what they call

the weapons systems operator

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