2 - Ha Giang & The Loop

The plan was to leave Hanoi and go to the north of Vietnam, close to the border of China and do a motorbike tour in group, going around the mountains and seeing some of the most beautiful geology in the region, if you look at it on the map, it's about as close as you can get, and to get there you are slowly going uphill into the mountains.

Leaving Hanoi you got to see some pretty soulless neighbourhoods of quite brutal socialist tower blocks.

One thing I don't miss about Vietnam is the buses, extremely claustrophobic 'VIP' buses with a pod that you have to lay down in, comfortable, but strange. Also, the bus services generally picked you up from various hotels, then dropped you off at another bus stop, for you all to get off of the shuttle bus and onto the long distance bus, which wasted a lot of time and added on an hour onto almost every journey in the country.

I was recommended this particular tour by a friend that I'd spoken to before going, so I basically didn't do any research at all, and luckily, it turned out to be absolutely amazing. I thought it would be a tour with a couple of people and some nice views, but it was a 4-day odyssey, with every day packed with about 8 hours being on the back of a motorbike, being driven around incredible landscapes and stopping almost every hour at another unbelievable viewpoints, at a cafe stop, temple, street food, waterfalls, river tours, the whole thing was impeccably organised and so, so good. It was one of the best things I've ever done in my life and everyone I spoke to pretty much agreed - granted, if it rained, it would have been pretty miserable, we were lucky as we were just about escaping the rain on most days and the week before and after our trip were plagued by bad weather, the temperature even dropped from 10-15 degrees that we had, to 3-5 degrees with rain a week later.

The tour was a group of about 100-130 people, mostly young backpackers with some older groups, and we were split into groups of 10 people per motorbike convoy, which was great as we got to know each other really well through the 4 days, and having a good group vibe was a real treat as it made each day just full of laughs and good times. This was our group, diverse with English, German, USA and Australian, including someone also called Alex and also from Southampton!!!

We arrived at the hostel in the evening and it felt like a school trip, so well organised, you had to pack your day bag to take on the 4-day trip with the bare minimum, a few change of clothes, my cameras, and that's about it. We all got a good rest and in the morning we had a lecture style induction of health and safety and how to get past the police checkpoints and not being fined if you were driving your own motorbike without an international motorbike license, which was the case for most people doing that.

We stopped to do a 20 minute walk up the mountains and into this huge cave complex

The first night we stayed in this hostel complex which was pretty nice, though our actual dorms were basically a big room with 10 matresses next to each other on the floor! Again, it felt like a school trip. The night consisted of being forced to drink 'happy water' / rice wine spirit and making everyone do kareoke, which to be honest, with the music taste of teenagers and young backpackers in their early 20s, I cannot stand... We heard sweet caroline be sung 3 times in one night and lots of pop songs that were released in the late 90s/early 2000s and definitely before the people singing them were even born, I actually made friends with a group of Germans that night because we were in the corner as far away from the music as you could be and we all bonded over hating the music

On day 2 we set off early after a breakfast, and were at a stop where young girls were braiding everyone's hair (there were pretty harrowing signs saying don't give tips as it insentivizes them and the parents to take them here to work instead of being at school). This is Adam, a guy from Essex that I made friends with

We had a stop after motorbiking at a temple and with a street food market in front of it (there was always some kind of food/drink vendor at the stops)

The next stop was at the border of China, the organisers were joking saying don't get too close or you will be captured by border patrol and won't be able to come back

Usually by the time we stopped for lunch we were all starving, somehow sitting down on a moving motorbike all day seems to use a lot of energy, and you're exhausted at the end of the day because you're constantly in awe all day looking at the landscapes. These buffet lunches were a good feed, but the same every day and I was glad to have different food afterwards.

We walked up the hill to a ridge with great photo opportunities

This is Alex, the girl from Southampton, we were good buddies for the trip and it was comforting to know someone from my hometown there!

After another long day we finished the day's driving at our accommodation, it was a really nice one and in a newly built complex of accommodation in a valley. 

We arrived fairly early with an hour or two of sunlight left and I enjoyed a drink in this gorgeous garden outside the hostel, some other people from the trip joined and we had a really nice time, getting to know people on the trip from really different backgrounds.

This morning coffee was with a spectacular view! Really nice and peaceful there.

This was my driver, he was a man of few words and just wanted to do his job, he said he was working to save as he was expecting a child, we had a nice night on the last evening basically using google translate to have a conversation, sentence by sentence

Our first stop of the third day was to do a river tour, which was amazing. We drove down to the river ferry and people looked after the bikes while we got on the boat.

These were steamed 'bamboo rice', you cracked open the bamboo to get sticky, coloured rice from within, it was actually quite bland and you added salt to it whilst eating it for flavour

This was an epic coffee stop, they had kareoke and music on the go, and everyone had a good time, we usually stopped in our group and the next group also stopping with us too. Whenever we got back on the bikes, one of the drivers (they were called 'easy riders' on the tour) would play high BPM Vietnamese techno music every time, and the noise of constant beeping was in my head for days after I left the tour.

This was our group leader, who always drove his motorbike at the front of the convoy and led the group, he was really charismatic and always saying okay group twooooo, are you readyyyyy, follow meeeee

This was our accomodation for the last night, a ridiculous love island style villa!! Really it was unbelievable. Brand new, up on a hill in an insane valley, with outdoor pool table, and just gorgeous views. I was told that it was worth it to do the tour as a 4-day tour instead of a 3-day one as the 'homestay' was good on the last night, nonetheless, this blew my expectations out of the water.

After a lavish dinner with too music chanting and downing shots of 'happy water' and doing this Vietnamese ritual of chanting 3,2,1 in their language before downing your shot (I can still remember the sound of it now, months later), we spent the whole night playing pool, dancing, joking and just having a great time on the last night.

I needed two back-to-back coffees in the morning to get me ready for the last day, tired, but still in awe of the beauty of the valley we were in.

Off we set for the last time! By the end of the day, we were all groaning in pain every time we got off of the bikes, and barely able to flex our legs over the seats!

Our last stop and conveniently on the last day to freshen us up from the hangovers was a walk to a waterfall and natural pool for a swim, with lots of people diving from the top of the waterfall.

We took advantage of a long coffee / karaoke stop to take some group photos with my camera after many days of being together and becoming good buddies

This was 'Team England' with the addition of a guest from Malta

Ingenious rain protection for the karaoke set-up at one of the coffee stops.

One of the last stops was at a centre where traditional Vietnamese textile methods were shown to us

By this time we were all absolutely destroyed, we did the final hour or so to complete the loop and I was barely able to make it, my eyes were closing whilst on the back of the motorbike and at the last coffee stop I was laid on the floor sleeping. We arrived back at the first hostel and retrieved our main travelling rucksacks, had a bite to eat and all awaited our buses to go to our next destinations. Whilst our group arrived and was heading on, the next group was also at the hostel all excited to go on their own trip the next day - so well organised it was, a constant cycle of visitors doing the trip, they must have so many drivers employed driving the loop every day. I got the feeling that this as a travel destination will only get more and more popular, and apparently the infrastructure around it and the quality of the roads is only just getting to the point where it's doable (some parts of the roads were being laid as we were going through them and at one point we stopped and all put face-masks on before going through a dusty & stoney section for 30 minutes while they made the road), so it was good to do it whilst it still felt like an up-and-coming thing to do.

Some travellers were going to the same places so we stayed in touch to meet up in the next days which worked out really well, I was going to Sapa, a mountain town a night bus away. After a week of being in a hostel dorm and sleeping badly I booked a hotel for the next town so I could get some proper rest!