PEACE DIVIDEND Beach boys frolic in the sand and surf at Cua Lo, a major port during the Vietnam War

Seeking the Good Life
Vietnam is resurrecting the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail as a new national highway. Will it transport the country to a brighter future?

By Kay Johnson

The Ho Chi Minh Trail has always been more than just a road. During the Vietnam War, it was a powerful symbol of defiance and determination. Actually a 16,000-km spider web of paths through Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the trail was called the "lifeline road" by the communist North Vietnamese and used by them to ferry troops and arms. U.S. armed forces tried to destroy it with nearly 1 million tons of bombs, but they never fully succeeded. Quite simply, the Ho Chi Minh Trail led the world's mightiest military to frustration and, finally, withdrawal.

	PHOTO ESSAY Road to Riches A journey down Vietnam's new Ho Chi Minh Highway

Vietnam's government has called the trail back to active duty—this time as an economic lifeline. The largest public-works project in the country since the war's end, the 1,690-km, $500 million Ho Chi Minh Highway is being built as a second north-south artery that will eventually connect Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh City. Parts of the road trace the original trail in central Vietnam that had long been abandoned to the jungle. The goal is to transform the nation's economy, just as its namesake transformed the war, bringing development to impoverished western provinces that have largely missed out on Vietnam's growth of the past decade. State media are filled with glowing plans for industrial zones that will serve some 6 million people.

	FROM OUR ARCHIVES A Trail Becomes a Turnpike "U.S. intelligence agencies have been persistently reporting that the North Vietnamese were sending masses of troops and weapons down the Ho Chi Minh Trail..." Mar. 26, 1973 A Cavalryman's Way Out "Khe Sanh, where 6,000 Marines had endured a bloody 77-day siege in 1968, was a moonscape of shell craters flecked by twisted steel runway sheets and discarded shell casings..." Feb. 15, 1971 Archive links are premium content

But can Vietnam really pave its way to prosperity? The highway's many critics, including some members of Vietnam's National Assembly, say investors are more interested in well-populated coastal areas—no matter how good the road into the hinterlands—and that the money would be better spent upgrading Highway One, the existing north-south thoroughfare hugging the coast. A recent jaunt down the Ho Chi Minh Highway found smooth blacktop that stretches through mostly empty land. There are smatterings of new settlements and some government projects, including a hydropower dam being built near the former battle site of Khe Sanh. Foreign investment appears scant—and so does traffic. Traveling along a 20-km stretch of road in central Nghe An province, near the border with Laos, TIME's reporters counted nearly as many oxcarts (four) on the road as trucks (five).

Yet the highway is already generating hope in some of Vietnam's poorest areas. In Gia Lai province in the country's Central Highlands, Nguyen Dinh Can reckons the new road will enable his coffee-processing company to cut its cost of delivery to Ho Chi Minh City by a third. And in Nghe An, 23-year-old Nguyen Duc Hieu says increased traffic has allowed him to open a motorcycle-repair business: "My mother is happy. Before the road was built, I would have had to leave home to find work." The original Ho Chi Minh Trail helped win the war that unified Vietnam under communism. The Ho Chi Minh Highway may prove to be a unifying force, too—but this time in pursuit of capitalism.