Ha Giang Loop

The night buses are getting easier. Or maybe they are not. But it was seven hours back deep into the Northern Vietnam mountains for us. Our goal was a motorbike tour of the Ha Giang province, to witness some massive limestone mountains, gorgeous terraced agriculture valleys, and high vantage lake lookouts.

We arrived at 4am, and woke up the poor hostel owner to be let inside. Some of these owner operators work too hard for us tourists. He gave us a bed for the rest of the night, and we crashed for a short time more. Hopefully the only crashing we would do, as we were getting on the bikes in the morning to go!

We met our gang in the morning. There would be 11 tourists on this tour. 9 of us on an easy rider, which means someone else is driving for us. Two people, Manuel and Mitch, decided that they had enough experience to tackle the roads themselves. Our guide Minh gave us the run down of what we were doing, a 3 day 2 night adventure filled with twists, turns and karaoke.

We got on our bikes and away we went! It was 5 degrees outside for pretty much the entirety of the route. It’s not supposed to get this cold in Ha Giang province, but when there’s a cold front from China coming in, there’s only so much you can do. It’s better than doing it in the pouring rain, which is what would have happed a few days before or after our window.

It was nice having an easy rider for the warmth if anything. They took the force of the wind, and provided body heat on one front. We sent all of our warm stuff home with Cam’s family though, so we were still cold. 6 layers of shirts and light jackets and a massive rain poncho was the outfit of choice for the whole time.

The easy rider was also great for the roads. These roads are windy bastards with frequent 10 degree slopes up and down. Small cargo trucks carrying logs, hay, and animals navigate these corners, but our bikes navigate them faster, whipping around these trucks on semi blind corners. On blind corners, the middle yellow line is just a suggestion, and you would honk before rounding to alert anyone of our presence. There were no accidents on the route, but that didn’t stop some in our group from worrying about it. There’s not really a smarter way to plan out these roads through. The mountain terrain up here is so three dimensional that a straight flat section is that of dreams.

Day one consisted of quite a few lovely viewpoints of hills, valleys and villages. All somewhat indistinguishable from each other, all green, slightly foggy and beautiful. There were a lot of tour groups doing the loop coming the other way (we did it CCW), which I think is more common. The major hostels have 100 tourists departing on the loop every day, and have 500 a day in high season (October). We estimate that there were near 1000 tourists on the Ha Giang loop at the same time that we did it.

We were somewhat nervous riding on the bike the first day. Our hands were too cold to hold onto the bike, so we just balanced on the back. I think we were the only ones to do that the entire trip at all. It wasn’t that hard, all the locals so it, you just need balance and confidence.

At night, we arrived at the homestay in Du Gia. We all immidietly jumped into a bed to try and warm up, our cores were frigid. After a couple hours it got better, and we had a nice family style dinner. The people all drink Happy Water, a rice wine alcohol, and there’s a big cheers chant to go with each shot. A lot of the easy riders were really into it, and got the rest of the group into it too. We then karaoked till exactly 10:00, when the hosts shut it down.

The start of our second day was lovely. We we had a pho for breakfast, at the bar, overlooking the fellow houses and farmland in the village. It was a nice serene morning before the frigid adventure that was to take place.

The adventure to Dong Van today was in a more remote part of Ha Giang province, and as a result the roads were narrower, and used less than the day before. The quality was good though. The roads had been recently upgraded, in part due to the popularity of tourists on the Ha Giang loop. There are a lot of accidents from self drivers, and the new pavement has greatly reduced that opportunity.

The driving was much the same of the day before. Lots of stops of beautiful canyons and valleys. The mountains rolling beyond the horizon. Terraced farmland anywhere that was even slightly plausible. Much lush green covered slightly by a white cloudy haze that was near 0 degree mist. It was still freezing. Our butts were slowly getting more sore as the day progressed.

The highlight of the day was Nho Que Lake. We took a long windy detour down to the dam, where we switched transportation from the bike to the boat, and went for a tour along the deepest sheer canyon in Vietnam (according to the guide).

The boat was a little rickety. Our materials engineering brains were concerned about the piss poor welds and the massive amounts of pitting corrosion on the floor. But the rustbucket floated just fine, and got us where we needed to go. The boat was pumping dance music the whole time too, which is now very common around the countryside.

The canyon from the bottom was really cool. It introduced the colour of red to the landscape, imposing itself on the cliffs in sharp contrast to the limestone and green that we had become accustomed too. We also got to see the man made lake from the top once we were on the bikes. Just a long narrow blue channel in the sea of green.

The night was an evening full of warming up in our beds, family dinners, and kareoke, just like the last. It was a little more subdues this time though, as we were all warming around a fire singing more campfire songs in the evening. Apparently, no one outside of Canada known “If I Had a Million Dollars,” which blew our minds.

The gang we were with was really lovely. There were a few solo travelers, Manuel, Mitch, Isabella and Kate who were a lot of fun to hang out with. We had a little slumber party trying to keep warm in the evenings. A couple groups were with us too, Amber and Henri, and Wendy and Lara.

The morning was a lot of fun. We convinced Mitch over breakfast that we decided to extend the final day of the tour, meaning we would be getting back to Ha Giang at 8 instead of 3. This would cause a domino effect in his tight knit plans to fly back home early the next morning. Once he was about to cancel his hotel we let him in on the joke.

Day 3 was a long cold, misty day. The main goal was to get back to Ha Giang by 3 so most of the gang could catch their bus back to Hanoi. We sped through the cold landscape, taking our time with only a few stops.

The first was near the border with China. A long manned by drone electric fence was constructed along the area. I guess before covid Vietnamese would just walk over the border to China and back for work. Not the case any more, you get shot on approach. We were a healthy distance back from the fence, which was on the other side of the valley. Cam’s guide got lost and went to the gas station first so she missed this.

The second stop was at an old local monarchs house. I guess a village leader of the area 150 years ago built a nice house with some gardens, and we got to explore it. The whole thing was pretty open to explore which was nice. Basic wooden framing, tiled roof, nice gardens. Some were cold though, and waited by a small fire that the locals were having.

We had some street food here that Minh bought us. A really good skewer of BBQ meat was the favorite. There were also moon buns, which were honey and sesame deep fried rice balls. They were good for the morning!

Lunch was had in Minh’s hometown. He and the chef were good buddies. We had soup with fresh cut noodles and lots of oreos. Courtesy of Mitch.

The final stop was a lookout point with a bunch of young women selling yellow flowers. These flowers are important for the holiday of Tet (Lunar New Year), which is the biggest holiday in Vietnam. The entire country essentially closes down for a few days while everyone visits their families. Preparation’s were starting early, we saw a couple of pink cherry blossom trees being transported on the back of motorbikes while we were on tour for the holiday.

We said goodbye to our friends when we got back to Ha Giang. Many were back to Hanoi, but we were off somewhere else. We had a pizza for dinner, which is the exact kind of warm meal you need after freezing your tail off for 3 days. Soup just wasn’t cutting it anymore. We got some rest, cause we had an early bus in the morning. We were not done with the mountains just yet.