During mid-February 2004, award winning combat photographer Tim Page and documentary film maker Marianne Harris (recording the expedition) will lead a dozen or so veterans, history buffs, academics and interested people on a rare insider's expedition into Vietnam & Laos. Tim's goal will be primarily to allow you to examine, actually experience, and record what aspects possible of the essential pivotal role played by the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the Vietnam conflict. Much was written about the war, but little at all -even today- is known about the Trail. Those who built and used the all-important Trail, the parts they played in the war effort, their motivations, and their fears and loves, are the subject of Tim's retrospective.

The Fifteen Day Expedition will begin in Hanoi Vietnam, by air and land; will follow the old Ho Chi Minh Trail into Laos and along some of the most rugged road anywhere in the world. Although the group will travel by air and by modern, air-conditioned 4WD vehicles, the extreme and rugged Trail geography gives a new appreciation for the real accomplishment of those who built it. Then the team will wend its way back into Vietnam, and to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

Along the way they will meet and interview historical figures and those who were connected with the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Among these are Ho Chi Minh's personal photographer and a number of his contemporary colleagues, officers and generals who built the Trail and soldiers who traveled down the Trail. Then meet those who actually lived on the Trail: the lowland Lao and “Lao Theung” who were literally squeezed between the titans USA & Vietnam. Local people & village headmen describe moving whole villages into nearby limestone caves to escape bombing and ancient Pathet Lao soldiers & commanders talk of when they shot at the US planes overhead with anything from flintlock rifles to Soviet anti-aircraft pom-poms.