Switchbackin' 1

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.