Welcome to Vietnam! The next country in our epic journey around South Asia. Spoiler alert: it’s obscenely beautiful, definitely the most dramatic landscapes we’ve experienced to date, and what better place to showcase that than Ha Giang; an epic mountainous region in the far rural North of Vietnam, snuggled up against the border of China.

Now, would it be a blog post these days if I hadn’t made an ambient travel video? Hells no!

Day 67 – Travel to Ha Giang

I’ll spare you the travel details, only to mention that at our transit hotel, my first slurp of pho (noodle soup) to which I had so looked forward to coincided with a man at the next table uttering the words “I puked my guts up all night”. Needless to say it took the shine off what should have been a transcendent moment. From Hanoi Airport, we took a 7 hour bus to Ha Giang and briefly explored the town, the starting line of the Ha Giang Loop, a three or four day motorcycle ride around some of the world’s most spectacular roads and landscape. Let’s get to it.

Ha Giang Town

Day 68 – Ha Giang Loop Day 1

First, meet Huy and Lan, our drivers. Billie got Huy, who had a super comfy bike, spoke English, was very sweet and generally looked after us. I had Lan, who’s bike was fine, communicated with me mostly in comical sound effects and was worryingly bad at hand eye coordination tasks like playing pool or other games. He kept me alive though, so it’s all good.

We started with a village tour which was so informative and actually just totally beautiful in itself. There are lots of ethnic minority groups in the Northern area of Vietnam and our journey would allow us to meet many, indeed our ‘easyriders’ Huy and Lan were themselves from local villages and not strictly Vietnamese in ethnicity. It was great to get a low down of all this before we set off.

We even came across the village taking down someone’s house, in order to rebuild it again. The community always pitches in to such tasks, each family sending at least a person or two to assist. When it’s their turn to re-build or put up a new roof, they’ll have the favour returned. Those who weren’t actively building were still helping by preparing food and drinks for everyone when the job was done. Apparently they’d all get very drunk at that point.

After that it was on to the loop proper. We spent a lot of time on the bikes – perhaps 3-5 hours per day, but had plenty of stops to walk a bit, stroll through a village or just look out at a viewpoint and rest our butts.

Turning up at our homestay for the evening was always a relief, it never failed to arrive just as we were starting to get really tired and really wanted a beer. We stayed in a different one each night, of course, as our route would take us many miles around the hills.

Day 69 – Ha Giang Loop Day 2

Look, I was getting all arty on this day and decided to take lots of monochrome pictures, so you are presented with a full day in black and white. We had an amazing tour through a local village and all the kids followed us round. We came across them just hanging out on the edge of precipices, just chilling on their own, parents nowhere to be seen.

Day 70 – Ha Giang Loop Day 3

The highlight of the whole trip had to be the Ma Pi Leng pass. We initially walked up this hill with seemingly every gap year student nipping at our heels like so many puppies after treats. Some pumped music out of speakers and we were highly concerned our experience would be tarnished as we paced past them at record speed.

However, once we passed the first viewpoint, nobody else came with beyond, and there by far was the best viewing of the pass. We walked for about 2 hours on a perilous path under the most beautiful cliffs you’ve seen in your life.

Below us was this incredible river, so far below and with tiny boats passing through an epic gap in cliffs akin to a scene from Lord of the Rings. Truly spectacular.

Day 71 – Ha Giang Loop Day 4

Day four mostly entailed hot-tailing it back to Ha Giang so we could catch a bus back to Hanoi, but we saw some beautiful scenes and a refreshing waterfall to cool our steaming piggies in.

Returning back to lower altitudes brought the return of my favourite ‘rice flower tree’ upon which huge red flowers adorn bare branches in a picturesque and undeniably Asian way.

And so at 15:15 we were back at Ha Giang only to be ushered onto our mini-van bus at 15:30 to take us back to Hanoi. We had to get back that night, otherwise we wouldn’t be there in time to welcome our very special guest the following morning. Who could it be? Find out next time in the Hanoi edition of So Long London!