Looking around it’s hard to believe that only four decades ago this quiet, forlorn landscape was hell on earth. Huynh knows what war smells like – he lived it and he survived it. He lights them and though it is small, it erupts into flames, intense fire angrily spitting out as an acrid smoke swells and billows, the stench filling our nostrils. Huynh wanders the overgrown brush around the airfield and finds two American army spoons, an old Budweiser beer can and two pieces of artillery debris the size of a Tic Tac. If the North Vietnamese Army wanted to attack Kon Tum, they would first have to break through the fire line of Rocket Ridge. The ridge was a South Vietnam stronghold. On Rocket Ridge, the US Army had built a chain of fortified artillery positions known as Fire Support Bases or FSBs for short to shield the roads, the supply route and to stop the enemy approaching Kon Tum from the north. Its barren profile is clearly visible from Phoenix Airfield, also known as Dak To Base Camp and Dak To II Airfield, now just a bare empty patch of asphalt farmers use to dry cassava. Rocket Ridge runs north-south parallel to Route 14 like a giant raised scar. But in Kon Tum, there’s nothing on display in careful glass boxes, no black and white photos to hammer home lessons of the past.

It’s easier for us to feel we have taken away something meaningful from the tragedy. I have seen the skulls at the Killing Fields. We plant a proverbial flag into the country we have travelled – I have seen this, I have done that – and the same is true for sites of dark tourism: I have crawled the Cu Chi Tunnels. So why? We base a great deal of our travel on tangible experiences and photo opportunities. The outcome was teetering on an edge who won control over the Central Highlands would win the war.

By spring 1972, the US Army had already begun their withdrawal from ground involvement in the war. Kon Tum province was the site of one of the bloodiest and most definitive battles of the Vietnam War. Most of the war sites here have been returned to nature – as much as something can return to nature after being carpeted with Agent Orange. It’s true, there’s nothing to see in Kon Tum per se. “In my 15 years of doing this, no tourist has ever asked me to do a war tour.

When we inquired about touring the sites related to the Vietnam War, Mr Huynh paused, visibly perplexed.

Kontum by Thomas McKenna