This is a twilight view of Dong Ha, a city of about 80,000 which is the capital of Quang Tri province. The bridge is part of Highway 1, the main north-south highway in Vietnam. Lots of big trucks on that highway.
A scene from the Dong Ha market, a big and busy place. The avocados are tastier and much cheaper than in Hanoi.
This is the bridge (or a replica?) that crossed the 17th parallel, the border between North and South Vietnam. The southern side is painted yellow, the northern side is blue, which is how it was during the war. Five kilometers on either side of the border was the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. A bad choice of a name, since fighting went on there throughout the war.
The city of Quang Tri is 16 kilometers south of Dong Ha. In 1972 there was an 81-day battle to retake the city from the North Vietnamese army, which had captured it earlier in the year. The city was devastated and the citadel at the heart of the city totally destroyed. According to the information in the citadel museum, the US bombing of Quang Tri was equal to 7 Hiroshima bombs. The figure given was 328,000 tons of bombs—and Quang Tri is a small city (current population 23,000). The photo shows the destruction of the city.
A photo from inside the citadel today. The walls have been rebuilt; inside it’s mostly a park, with a few structures, like this one memorializing the dead.