Hi again and welcome back! I am hoping to catch up with all of my substacks by the end of February, however I am realizing this may be a more daunting task than expected as I am now in the midst of school, and have Ha Giang, Bangkok, Bali, Byron Bay and more to cover. Either way, I will try to keep catching up even if I cannot give the most in depth review of each place, and as we do not have any more 16-day-long trips in our future I am sure I will catch up eventually.
The second major part of our trip after Hanoi and Ha Long Bay was Ha Giang, Vietnam. Now you might be asking, what in the world was I up to in Northern Vietnam for 4.5 days, and here’s your answer! We spent a total of 4 days on the backs of motorbikes, traveling over 450km through the Northern Vietnamese mountains. Why we did this? I’m not 100% sure, but I would do it again in a heartbeat (maybe more realistically a year or two, I am still recovering). So let’s start at the beginning!
On February 3rd we arrived at the Jasmine Ha Giang tours office at 8pm, ready to board our 6 hour long sleeper bus to Ha Giang from Hanoi. We were among around 60 other people, from couples, to solo travelers, to groups like us. There was a ton of chaos getting onto the busses including a 10 minute walk, as Hanoi’s roads are not equipped for such large busses. We threw our backpacks under the bus, took our shoes off and put them in plastic bags, got into a bunk, and at 9pm we were off! These bunks were awesome, and I felt like a kid on their way to sleepaway camp - so much adrenaline that I wasn’t able to sleep a wink. Unfortunately the roads were really rough, and coupled with the stops every 2 hours (and some of the nastiest bathrooms I’d ever seen), I was definitely ready to get off the bus when we arrived in Ha Giang around 3am.
Once at the Jasmine tours base camp in Ha Giang that we dubbed the love island resort, we checked into our room and took a nice 4 hour nap before getting up again at 8am. We started off the day with a buffet breakfast, signed some waivers, and packed/repacked our bags for the trip. These bags would be on the back of our motorbikes for 4 days, so some reshuffling was necessary and our larger bags were left behind in Ha Giang. Luckily for me, my bag was small enough to fit the whole time! Yippee! We got called up as group #7, and we met our easy riders, the people driving the motorcycles we were on the back of, and headed off!
I’m not really sure if I need to specify this, but I was terrified. We headed out with little to no warning and I was convinced I would fall off my bike one way or another, but no worries! It is actually much easier than I expected, and my driver Tan assured me that he had been doing this for longer than I have been alive. This was much needed courage, and no one fell off during our trip (I also do not think that is a common occurence but was definitely holding on for dear life during certain parts of the ride).
Over the next 4 days, we spent many hours on our bikes, and our rough schedule consisted of this:
8am wakeup & breakfast
9am head out
[biking, coffee breaks, hikes, views]
1pm (ish) lunch
[again biking, scenic views, etc]
5-6pm arrive at hostel for the night
7pm dinner
Now you might be saying, wow this is a pretty chill excursion! Well, I thought it would be too, until the soreness started to hit. Sitting on a bike most of the day really caught up to me by day 2, and weirdly enough my knees took the brunt of the soreness (alongside my butt, but that feels quite obvious). Additionally, my bike didn’t have a backrest so I was spending most of the day engaging my core so that I wouldn’t slip off of the back of the bike. We saw many many cool sites, and these are just some of my favorite: the M pass, Lung Khuy cave, Heaven Gate, Lung Cu Flag Tower, Ma Li Peng Pass/Sky-Walk, and so much more. Every stop was breathtaking, even when it was misting/raining so much on day 3 that we had little to no vision. We got to learn how clothes & textiles were made, saw many beautiful villages, poked our fingers through the Chinese border (sorry dad), and also met the most amazing people along the way.
Overall, my experience in the Ha Giang loop is something that I find very difficult to express on paper, and I think it will change my worldview for many years to come. Every single person I met on the loop was incredibly kind, and I am beyond grateful that I got to experience something this unique. Sitting on the back of a bike with no music or headphones in the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I am so thankful for this experience.
Other thoughts
It is seriously cold in February. We thought we would be fine with only a couple of layers, but I was in 2 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of pants, a long sleeve and a raincoat and I was freezing. Invest in layers if you’re coming in the winter - the temperature drops by at least 10ºF when you go in the mountains!
Another thing we should’ve brought more of is toilet paper - many bathrooms along the way will not have it and it will definitely come in handy!
If you are over around 5’6” prepare for discomfort on the sleeper bus! I could barely lay straight and I am 5’4”.
Go alone, go with friends, go with your significant other - TONS of people were on this trip & everyone was socializing so it was such a welcoming environment that I think genuinely anyone adventurous would enjoy.
Invest in the private rooms… it was an extra $30USD each for us to do so, and we slept really well as opposed to some of the people in the shared dorm rooms… some had over 12 people so if you’re fine with that go for it!
The food gets a bit repetitive. I ate white rice and fruit for 4 days and was fine (shoutout my favorite meal of white rice, with peanuts), but my non-celiac friends were sick of it at the end. Every meal is some form of french fries (odd right), spring rolls, rice, noodle dish, and a meat dish.
And that’s it! We finished February 7th at 4pm and headed off to our sleeper bus that evening at 8pm. What did we do in between? Played pool, had food, sat around, nothing much. This sleeper bus was AWESOME, partially because we were so tired, but we all slept the whole 6 hours. We had a bit of an issue finding our hostel for the night, but luckily for us the owner stayed up for us to check in that morning, and was gracious enough to help us get a cheap cab to the airport in the morning. We set off again at around 9am with less sleep than we had initially wanted, and said our goodbyes to Vietnam after an incredible week there.
Miscellaneous pictures!
I ran out of room to put pictures so here are some extras :) Couldn’t decide between any of them so why not put them all…
Thanks for reading and see you all next time! XOXO