Final Days in Vietnam

The last time I wrote in this journal, Kenzie and I had just arrived in central Vietnam. In just two weeks, I have beheaded a chicken in Phong Nha (which a local lady then fried for us and served with peanut sauce for lunch), scaled Mua Peak and boated through caves in Ninh Binh, visited a secret coffee shop on a train track in Hanoi (an older local lady led us through a hidden alley past the police checkpoint), and explored the northernmost regions of the country on a motorbike, even driving within a few hundred feet of the Chinese border. We are already two months in with only one to go; we head to Cambodia in a couple of days.

The last few days, we were on the Ha Giang Loop, a famous four-day motorbike loop through the Ha Giang region in Northern Vietnam. People are drawn to this loop because of the breathtaking beauty of the region—we biked winding roads through towering limestone cliffs that looked like they belonged in a Dr. Seuss world and lush rice terraces glowing with golden light.

People also come to do the loop because it offers a glimpse into a place that is very untouched by Western culture. Groups of tiny 2-to 6-year-old kids roamed the mountain passes arm in arm, with no parents to be found, waving and high-fiving us as we drove by. Women brightly dressed in tribal garments walked the steep slopes, hunched with baskets filled with firewood on their backs. The only tourists here are the backpackers and adventurers who bike the loop, with practically no hotels and resorts to stay at, and the only accommodations being homestays that are run by families.

For me, the best part was the grittiness and unpredictability of the adventure. We were on the road every day from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening. Some days we were smoothly cruising through the scenic highways, and other days we were practically dirt biking in the mud over slippery rocks. One especially memorable time was when we had to detour up a narrow mountain path to avoid a new police checkpoint. (The police were fining tourists without international motorbike licenses and taking away the bikes of people who had been stopped three times). The road was so steep and gravelly at times that our bikes would slow down to a crawl, threatening to stop, even on the lowest gear if we didn’t have enough momentum. The dirt and dust from the path invaded my eyes and mouth through my mask and sunglasses. We drove for a couple of hours up and down the steep slopes, past families that would come out of their homes to smile and wave at us. We could tell that we were really off the beaten path here; we went the majority of the time without passing other travelers, and the locals looked pleasantly surprised to see us. Our guides stopped frequently to converse rapidly in Vietnamese, and the guide in the back sometimes honked at the guide in the front to go a different way. By the time we finally made it to our lunch stop, it was three hours later than we had planned to make it there, and everyone was sore and covered in dirt. Lunch positively slapped.