The incredible Ha Giang Loop

Marco Whyte|2024-03-30 (9 months ago)42 views

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My friend Jan and I are off on a sleeper bus to Ha Giang, which is quite an experience. Everybody gets their own capsule on the bus for the next 8 hours.

When we arrived in Ha Giang, we slept a little more until it was time to take off. The Ha Giang Loop is a famous motorcycle route that is in the north of Vietnam, bordering China. It takes 4 days and we each have our own "easy driver", which is the term for the person driving us on the motorcycle. Mine is called Juan and is very fun to be around as well as being able to speak good English! We are a group of eight, four drivers and four passengers.

From the very first day, the views were incredible and they only got better and better.

Here is one of the many views on the first day.

We also stopped to swim at a waterfall, which was a lot of fun.

At night, we ate a good meal, and then the "Happy Water" came out. This is their special drink, a white wine made from rice. Everytime you drink, you sing a Vietnamese chant and quickly we had many shots of this happy water. It was a lot of fun, with each driver doing the chant with their passenger. Of course, no Vietnamese party is complete without Karaoke! Everybody took their turn singing a song, I did Frank Sinatra.

The next day we continued onwards, stopping at a river that leads to a cave.

During the drive you get used to the views, but they are all remarkable.

On the third day, we got to the famous pass with even more stunning views.

The next stop was to see the Chinese border, this was very interesting. The border consists of 1,297 km (806 mi), all covered by a highly secure fence. We were right next to it and a speaker started to talk to us. It was in Mandarin, but I have a feeling it wasn't welcoming us in 😂.

Unfortunately on the last day, I got sick and had to leave slightly early, but the whole experience was incredible, one of the coolest things I have done.