Switchbackin'

Parts 1 to 4

I'm dead again. Today's ride was a killer, and I realise I'm not completely recovered from the bug I've had for a few days. It would've been a hard day even if I was fully healthy, let alone in my current, sub-prime state.

I'm in a cute little town called Qang Ba, and this is my first day of what's known as the Hà Giang loop, a long loop of about 300km through the amazing hill tribes and villages and towns of this area, in the far north of Vietnam, tucked right up against the Chinese border.

Resting in Town

I arrived in the large town of Ha Giang a few days ago, after riding from Viet Quặng.

It was drizzly and misty, and both Bewdy and I were completely filthy by the time we got there.

Ponytails aren't big around here.

The countryside is so pretty

I'm living on these, while they're around

I found myself a room, and decided I really needed to rest up until I'm feeling completely well again.

Notice where the drain pipe runs to. This is pretty common, and they always have plastic slippers for you to wear in the bathroom, and another pair for the bedroom. They're always way too small for my yeti feet.

The town's surrounded by beautiful limestone karst cliffs

Wonder what they get up to here. Well, besides the obvious, there's the tours of course.

The thing to do for young foreign travellers up here is to pay for a motorbike tour of the Hà Giang loop, which involves sitting on the back of a bike, while an experienced rider takes you around the spectacularly scenic loop and shows you the sights, generally over 3 or 4 days.

Loads and loads of young travellers do it, I saw heaps of them in town. It's super expensive, but they all seem to be cashed up. I met a few travellers planning to hire their own motorbikes and do the loop themselves, but you need experience, as some parts of the road can be dangerous.

Vietnamese people, of course, all learn to ride motorbikes before they can walk, so Viet tourists ride the loop independently, in groups. In fact, the majority of non-village riders on the roads appear to be young Vietnamese tourists.

As for me, my crazy plan is to do the loop on my pushbike, which will probably live up to its name, and need to be pushed up some particularly tough bits.

Bewdy hates baths, but I forced her into it. That's her leaning against the wall. She's actually filthy. The guys gave her a long thorough high pressure hose down, and really cleaned her up, and then vehemently refused to accept any money for their work. How amazing is that?

Every single day people display their unending generosity to me. I don't know what I do to deserve it, I honestly really don't. I guess it's not just me, they must be nice to everyone.

While I was trying to sort out my phone plan at the Viettel office, the security guard gave me these delicious coconut sweets.

Yeah, random acts of kindness happen to me every single day.

This town's large enough to have its Soviet-style monuments

Pretty much every meal here (outside the tourist places) is served with sliced cucumbers, some sort of pickled veggies (the white things are like a type of small eggplant), and a bowl of thin soup with greens

My teeth need some metalwork

This lovely man made me bánh mì every morning. After I was finished he would shake my hand firmly and look me in the eye, with a knowing, connected look. And smile, of course. He'd give me free drinks too sometimes.

More coconut, at a stall outside the markets

The markets were super interesting, as usual. I pretty much always see something I've never seen before.

Medicinal 'erbs

Ok, get ready for gruesome

Let sleeping dogs die

I really don't know what these guys were doing hanging out here. They were totally stuffed.

Hairy roots

More ponies to burn

And their skeletons

New old hat

Qang Ba

Well this morning I felt like I'd rested enough, and was ready to ride again. Because I'm doing a loop and because these roads are so steep I decided to do myself a favour and travel lighter. So I left a whole stack of stuff at my hotel in Ha Giang, including my tent, sleeping bag, cooking stove, some clothes, and, shock horror, even my guitar.

Sad, but true. I'm doing without for the loop.

It was misty today, but it didn't actually rain, thankfully.

Heading out of Ha Giang.

Ok, I knew a lot of travellers came up here to do the loop, but this is next level. These are all tour groups who were ferried up from Hanoi, they all stayed and ate at this place, and were picked up in the morning by their motorcycle guides.

Tour groups passed me all morning. But because I'm slower than them, I'll only meet them every now and then. Hardly any tourists are in this town tonight, for example, I haven't actually seen one foreigner.

Tourist Instastructure

It didn't take long to start climbing, and once I started it basically went on for much of the day, a climb of about 1200m, and it really was steep for lots of it.

The road was generally good, but there were some really bad patches

It was too misty for many good views, at least earlier in the day

And with perilously low visibility at times

But then the views opened out.

This is Quan Ba, where I am right now.

Very Swiss-esque

The view from my guest house window

The view from my dining chair

Wedding preparations

Pho Bang

Ok, I admit it, I'm drunk.

Well, I'm between very tipsy and pissed, leaning to the right of that phrase.

I feel bloody good, I've gotta say.

Not just because of the alcohol of course, but because I've just had the best time ever at an engagement party, where pretty much everyone in the village was there.

It was a corn whiskyfest and complete food fiesta.

My guesthouse owner's brother is getting married, and tonight's party was a seriously massive celebration. They all started drinking at 8am, and my host Chúng picked me up at 5pm, (on foot, luckily), for the feast. And for some serious whisky drinking.

I don't know how those guys are still standing.

It was super fun, a couple of young people there spoke a little English, and were really keen to chat with me, so, helped along by Google Translate, we all had a wow of a time, me with fun translators in tow the whole time.

Pretty much everyone I spoke with told me fairly early on that they were drunk. Which they didn't really need to tell me, as it was sorta obvious. But it was such great fun because they were all still somehow able to have decent conversations.

Well, some more than others.

Basically it's no different from a Western wedding or engagement celebration, everyone eats loads of amazing food, and sits around drinking and chatting and dancing etc, but here the thing to do is to invite the whole table to a whisky toast. It happens every few minutes.

And being the foreign guest, loads of people from the party either came over to where I was sitting and invited me to toast with them, or invited me to their own tables to eat and drink some more.

I had a lot of whisky toasts, I can tell you.

I knew there was something going on as I rode into the village.

Watching some of the wedding party go past, from my guesthouse balcony

Ready to start the next feast

The guy in the beret is the grooms's (and Chung's) dad.

These women were singing traditional Chinese folk music, but the lyrics are completely improvised. It's like a duel between two singers, each tries to outdo the other. I've seen it before in other places. The loser has to skull whisky, surprise, surprise.

This is mainly a Hmong village, and many of the residents here have strong connections to China, and have extended family living there. My host, for example, speaks fluent Mandarin. There are also members of the Hoa ethnic group living here.

I eventually left the party, it was late, but there were a couple of tables of hangers on. As usual.

I tried to walk home between these two straight lines.

But of course I didn't. I got distracted by the kids, we had great fun, there was a mob.

Looking down from my rather grand guesthouse balcony.

It was a gobsmackingly beautiful ride here today, and steep as.

Leaving the town of Yen Minh this morning. Yep, I climbed way up to the top of those distant ranges today.

Blossoms are out in the villages

What a shame he's so messed up. He'd make a seriously good dinner.

Wow, I'm starting to think like a local

Truly magnificent scenery today. I say that a lot, but this was really special.

Terraced farming, using broken up limestone as retaining walls

Back to switchbacking

As I was coming around a bend I heard beautiful flute music, and found this local tribal guy, a flute maker, playing his flute across the valley. It was loud, echoing off the cliffs, and totally beautiful. I just stood there by my bike and marvelled at the incredible movie I was in.

Not far up the road was a little hill tribe market. I stopped to check it out, and snacked on fresh pineapple and sugar cane juice.

Caning it

Lots of kids around, all bushy and dirty and very very cute

These kids were playing a great flute song, some of it in three part harmony. It was a really interesting and haunting traditional tune.

A few local tourists were there, and posed with the kids.

The sweetest lady ever. Yeah, I'd ridden up the road behind her to get here. After she agreed to having her photo taken she then put her hand out, for money. Sad but true. I really had to give her some, it would've been super impolite not to. Feels sorta weird though.

Further up I met Pam and Paul, sweet English cyclists, going in the other direction, They're doing a 2 month trip, and we chatted for a while about the joys of cycling here. They're leaving soon, and, of course, really aren't ready to go back home.

So I left the main road and headed off to the village of Pho Bang, where I am now, rather than stay in the larger town of Song Lu. That's the bigger town down below.

The road eventually got rough, but it was only about 5 or 6 clicks to the village.

There's lots of beautiful traditional mud buildings in the village.

But bit by bit they're being replaced with newer and bigger ones. It's the same old process that's happening in so many places. All the old villages grow, along with the population, and none of the new houses are built in the traditional style. So their historic architecture, which itself creates such an incredible aesthetic charm for all the individual villages, slowly gets lost.

And the skills and knowledge of generations of traditional builders eventually disappears with it.

To add further pressure, as the Ha Giang loop becomes more and more touristed, new building will accelerate in many villages in the area. It's sorta like what happened in Sa Pa, another hill tribe area that used to be cute and authentic, but has now become a tourist mecca. Whilst still beautiful, the Sa Pa district is now full of high rise hotels and tourist infrastructure in many areas.

Yen Minh

Well, yesterday was a tough ride, tougher than the first day of the loop, but, despite my body not being totally 100%, somehow it was fine.

I've noticed sometimes that a day of pushing my body when it's not quite right  seems to occasionally heal it, rather than make it worse. Counterintuitive, yes, but it's happened to me a few times on this trip.

I left the verdant valley, and pretty much started the climb straight away.

For breakfast I stopped for a local noodle soup specialty, where they actually make their own fresh rice noodles as they go. It was so cool to watch.

First, the woman spreads the rice batter on a steamy hotplate.

Soon after she grabs it with this roller, and then hangs it on the ceiling, they're all floppy and rubbery.

When a customer comes in, they just grab one, throw it on the chopping board, chop away, and then chuck it in the soup.

It was seriously delicious.

The small amount of chilli paste was, by the way, enough to make the whole soup incredibly spicy.

And then off I went, back into those steep hills.

Loads and loads of people call out to me from their motorbikes. And video me as they go slowly past, and offer me encouragement. Or drinks. It's quite amazing.

See the eagle's nests?

Steep innit

My destination, Yen Minh, in the distance

Fixing my coconut fix

Rice fields right in town

The views from my guesthouse on the hill

Downtown Yen Minh. Burning horses, so the dead can get around.

Never seen these zucchinish veggies before

Dinner spot

Traditional hill tribe skirt design

A lot of locals wear their traditional hill tribe clothing all the time. But I feel a bit weird about going around photographing them. That's mainly because there's tourists about, and I imagine they get sick of it.

Deep fried and sweet. Ok, if I must. They tasted like a crispy version of a Polish pastry my dad used to make. They're even twisted, like his were

Guest house shrine

Dong Van

And now, suddenly, I'm in Dong Van, a larger town, sitting down in a restaurant with English on the menu. I just ordered a mango smoothie!

I felt remarkably well and not hungover today, and realised that for the whole party last night, not a drop of beer was drunk anywhere by anyone. Nor any wine. Nor random spirits, besides, of course, the locally distilled organic corn whisky, or, as it's known around here, the "happy water."

I didn't even have a hint of a hangover this morning, despite the copious amounts of the stuff I was politely forced to drink by the unrelenting and frequent friendly toasts. I mean, when you're the subject of the toast, ya can't not drink can ya.

Well, that's my excuse, and I'm stickin to it.

Again, it was a stunning ride to get here.

Rose gardens

This woman was making cotton yarn, to use in traditional weaving looms

The new overtaking the old (again). Stacks of old roof tiles, superceded by shiny new ones.

Lunchtime view

Ubiquitous bamboo smoking pipes

Plums and Roses

Heading up the many steep hills, I often found myself riding just a little bit faster than the kids walking home from (or to) school. They were sometimes really friendly, and sometimes a little more guarded. Sometimes we'd laugh and play little games as we moved along.

Many times they'd walk fast or jog to keep up with me, then sometimes stop when they got tired, and then suddenly sprint ahead of me, laughing, sweating, and looking very proud of themselves. So so cute.

I stopped at a really interesting Hmong mansion, which was built by Vuông Chính Đức in the 1920s. He was the head of the most powerful Hmong family in the region, which basically ruled over the whole district for over 100 years.

The complex includes architectural features common in China in the latter part of the 1800s, during the Qing dynasty, and was designed by stone artists (not stoned artists, although you never know) from Yunnan province in China, and built by local Hmong builders.

Outer gate

Entrance to the main building

The building is designed around a series of inner courtyards, surrounded by many rooms of varying sizes.

The woodwork is beautiful

Kitchen, for fiery cookups (and I guess the occasional fiery cockup)

Ancestor shrine. Very important.

Vuông family snaps. The large neck rings some of the women are wearing are called xấuv, and have a deep historical significance. They're worn to remind people of the era when the Hmong people were enslaved by the Chinese, and went through all sorts of hardships. They were persecuted by successive emperors, and had conflicts with other ethnic groups in China, so many eventually left and headed for Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

These days xuav are worn at special events and celebrations, and are also just used as a fashion accessory. They're always made of silver.

We tried to use the furniture, but it wouldn't fire

Spartan bedroom

Fire roasted egg, cassava ball and coconut snack

Spectacular, wherever you look

I got really close to the Chinese border today (within about a km).

Half Loopy

I guess I've sort of done about half of the Ha Giang loop now. I mean, there's so much to see around here, and I'm not sure if an actual official fixed loop even really exists, but I've ridden around half way around my own planned route.

I've been riding for 4 days up some very killer hills.

It's time to rest for a day or so, in the well-touristed town of Dong Van.

Time for some menus in English.

Time for banana pancakes with honey.

Time to get legless.❤️

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