“With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.”
– Sandra Lake
I wake up to the rainy morning. The sky is grey and while now it seems like a steady drizzle, looking at the wet garden I know that it has been raining for a while.
All packed up and ready to go, I go the counter and ask for a coffee. The other family is huddled up around a table having breakfast.
Loan and his wife are also packing up. They’re going to their hometown, around 30 kms away, for Tet, leaving the place for their lone staff to run. He’s checking up his jeep.
I ask him about the rain and he assures me it’s just ‘small’ rain and it would be better as the air would become clear and I would have good views on the road. I hope so. This is supposed to be ‘dry season’ as per my ‘googling’ last night.
Instead of my preferred leather jacket, I put on a ‘supposedly’ waterproof jacket, the only other piece I am carry. No raincoat, since it is ‘dry season’. I tie up my luggage on the back of the bike, which I always wrap in a waterproof bag to protect on the road, and off I go.
First I head to the Immigration office to get a permit which foreigners are supposed to take to go the frontier area. And I see that the office has been closed for a few days. The gate is locked up and inside it looks like it hasn’t been swept for a while with garbage and leaves adorning the courtyard. I look around but find no sign that this office would be open or was ever open in past few days. I check online to see if I am at the right place. I sure am.
I check the consequences of not taking a permit to go ahead. Someone has mentioned 3 possible results: 1) The police/military will turn you around if they catch you 2) The police/military will escort you back to Ha Giang, and 3) They would confiscate your bike, but that’s rare.
First 2 don’t seem to deter me, I am bit worried about the 3rd as it would cost me over 5000 dollars. But I have come this far, and I am ready to take my chances.
It’s not totally honest but I have heard of countless foreigners getting out of tricky situations but just pretending to not know the right thing, and not speaking any Vietnamese, and sometimes even English. Someone had written on a blog, if you can’t speak either English or Vietnamese, then you’re a headache which the police prefer not to deal with and let you go.
So I forge ahead.
Next I go to the ATM. It’s hard to find an ATM ahead, they’re far and few, and cash is still king around here, so necessary. Well the first one is not working. The next one is not working. And the next one has a long queue. And as I wait, standing in the rain, the locals are happily cutting the queue. After a futile 20 minutes wait, I google for an ATM on the way ahead. The next one is in Yen Minh (~100kms/ 3.5-4 hrs away). I have enough money to last on the way till there. After filling up my bike to full tank, I leave town. With around 60K population, this is the biggest city I would find till I hit Cao Bang.
Just a few kilometers outside Ha Giang the scenary already turns beautiful with lush green vegetation interspersed with houses, some traditional wooden houses, but mostly concrete. And as I wonder about the lost local architecture everywhere (which was supposed to be suited to your climate and whatever building material was abundant in your area) with everything now being concrete, I head along the river towards Yen Minh.
I stop after a while for a drink of red bull at a small roadside shop. And what would now be a usual scene, before talking to me, the shopkeeper puts on his mask. He’s afraid of virus, but maybe not so afraid to not make a buck.
The rain is getting stronger and by the time I reach a nice board welcoming me to the Unesco Global Geopark of Dong Van Karst Plateau, it is in full flow and I am already getting wet. I am a bit worried now, but not of rain. My motto is keep moving forward , today till Dong Van and rain cannot stop me. I am worried of missing out on the views in this weather.
The road starts to climb up the slopes of the limestone hills. The slopes are steep, over 10 degrees, and sharp turns are frequent. And the fog is getting thicker. I need to ride carefully.
As I head along, I find a nice viewpoint on the top of a hill. The ones tailor made for instagram tourists with frames built in shape of nests, hearts etc. But the parking is shut with tape and I find a lone car beside the road. As I turn my head back and take another look while riding ahead, I see a couple on the top. Aha! So I can still go up. I turn around, park my bike, and jump over the tape fence.
A guy sitting inside the empty cafeteria comes out. I point to the hill top and ask him in English ‘Can Go?’. He nods and bumbles something in Vietnamese. I don’t understand it. Seeing confusion on my face, he repeats again and I catch a single word ‘vé’. So he’s asking for a ticket. Whether legitimate or not, what can I do. ‘Bao nhiêu tiền? (how much?)’ I ask – the most frequently used sentence of a tourist. ’50’ he says in Vietnamese. Who knows what’s the right price. He’s taking his chance and I have no option. After handing him the dough I walk up.
‘Bac Sum Pass Check-in’ is paved on the slope. Its a beautiful viewpoint, with artifical nests, hearts, and other stuff so popular with Instagrammers for their photographs. I take a look around and hardly see anything in the valley below due to the dense fog. I head to the top and find that it’s not just a couple. It’s a family of four taking pictures. So they’re the ones travelling the car.
The mom is the only one in the family who seems to speak any English. So dad directs her questions to me through her. I am from India. Yes, I live in Vietnam. Yes, I am travelling alone. After helping them take a few family pictures I say my good bye, get a ‘best of luck’ and move on.
Riding on, I see ‘Viewpoint núi Đôi’ coming up on my map. All wet inside-out now, I keep riding till I reach that point. It is kind of a pass with road passing across a ridge. I see a small shop on the roadside and a trail going up the hill to the viewpoint. In this rain, and on this muddy trail? ‘Nah’. I anyways have no idea what is this núi Đôi. But why not have a break.
So I go stop and go to this shop. It’s a shed on the roadside nestling half on ground and half on the stilts. There a young boy crouched over a stove frying up something in a pan.
Happy to see a customer he comes using a walker. I see he has a limp.
He asks ‘ăn trưa?’ (lunch). I say ‘Coffee’.
He motions me to come in and goes back to his stove.
Another guy emerges from a small room inside the shed. From their talk I understand he’s the elder brother.
The younger one carries on his cooking, while the elder one gets to work making coffee.
He motions me to come in and sit at one of the tables.
Noticing I am all wet, the entrepreneur in him bumbles to a cupboard and pulls out a cheap plastic raincoat to sell to me. What’s the use, I think and decline.
Water is dripping from my jacket and my shoes are also filled up. ‘Everything’ inside is wet. That’s how it’s going to be for the rest of the day, I think, and get over it. The thought of drying up, changing, taking a raincoat, and then going, or simply stopping till the rain clears up, doesn’t come to my mind. It feels irrational, and may sound wierd or stupid, but putting myself through this physical discomfort feels cathartic. And to challenge myself to push through when it is raining, foggy, slippery, feels like ‘character building’.
Putting down my gloves and helmet on the chair, I take a walk around.
They have some seating area built on stilts at the back. There’s a small room where supposedly they live. Outside they have all kinds of herbs and what I think are some animal products for sale in jars and plastic packets. One side is like a mini nursery with plants in pots and jars – some flowers, some decorative and some I understand maybe vegetables or herbs. They also have wood carvings for sale.
After waiting for what seemed like an enternity for the coffee to drip down through the ‘phin’ (Vietnamese coffee filter) into a small glass with condensed milk, I stir it and take a sip. It is terrible coffee, so much coffee sediment filtered through the ‘filter’ it feels like drinking dirt stirred into milk. And already cold.
After paying a ‘steep’ 30K for the worst coffee I have had in a while, and wondering what it would be to live like this, in the middle of nowhere, in a dilapitaded shed, with a small business, and a small family at your side, I say my ‘Tạm biệt!’ to the waving brothers and ride on.
After a little bit, I see another tourist stop, which as usual for these times, is shut. There is a big courtyard, an office building and a few closed down sovenier shops and food stalls. There is a big hoarding and on it there is a picture of, finally I understand what it is (are?) ‘Nui Doi’.
So I ride down the hill-side and in the valley below see a small town. In the flat of the valley I can make out two small hills, side by side, perfectly carved by nature into the shape of the bust of a woman.
Of course it is a beautiful work of nature, standing gloriously in the middle of paddy fields. But what is more interesting is the legend behind the ‘fairy bosom’.
The story, in brief, goes like this.
Long ago, there was a fairy who came to earth from the sky and fell in love with a Hmong man. They married and had babies. Wht the fairy’s father found out about his daugher going to earth and marrying a man, he called her back. Reluctantly, the fairy had to go back to her father but she left her breasts on earth to feed her babies.
Admiring this quirk of nature, but also a bit underwhelmed by what ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and ‘Nui Doi’ turned out to be, I roll down the hillside into the valley and continue on the road widing up passing just behind the fairy’s breasts. Maybe in better weather, and from the hill top viewpoint, this would be a spectacular landscape.
The rain has become lighter and after descending the hillside, I motor along at a fair clip on the beautiful road along the Song Lo river, passing through settlements, with locals going about their business.
Leaving the riverside, the road turns right and I see a board marking ‘Frontier Area’. So here I am, without my permit, entering the frontier area. But I find no checkpoint, no police or military, and just keep riding on the serpentine road. It’s a beautiful road to drive, going up an down hills, through lush forests.
As I near Yen Minh, on a sharp sloping down nearing a turn, suddenly I feel myself hurled through the air. The bike has slipped out from under me, and I release my grip from the handle. For what felt like a few seconds (but really maybe fraction of a second) I feel weightless and then fall and slide on the tarmac. I see my bike swirling away, with the mirror, handle and my bag scratching against the road and coming to a stop maybe 10 meters away from me.
My mind is blank for a few seconds and I am just in the moment, feeling my body lying against the wet road. Then I get up and wondering what made the bike slip, I walked to my bike lying on its side in the middle of the road. I don’t think I was too fast, and I don’t think I braked too hard, but somehow I scored my first fall of the trip (Which is 1 more than the number of times I fell in my total 2500km ride from Hanoi to HCMC). Maybe it’s just the wet road and the tyres slipped on braking. Luckily I wasnt very near the turn, otherwise the bike (and maybe I) might have slipped and falled down the slope.
I try to get the bike up but feel a lack of strength, and a sharp pain in my left palm. I realize my little finger and a portion of the palm is hurt, maybe from the twist before I was able to release the bike. The bike feels heavy to lift and for a few moments I am standing there just soaking in the present. I feel no other injury, so that’s good. Even my jacket and jeans are not torn at all, so lucky I left the bike and let myself fall rather than being dragged. But I wasn’t aware of my luck ahead!
A couple of people drive by on their bikes, and I try to give them a helpless look so they may stop and help me. But I forgot I have a face mask and helmet on and they cannot probably see my ‘poor me’ face. Anyways they don’t feel like helping me, so just give me a look of ‘great job falling down’ and carry on.
Somehow I get the bike up and assess the damage. The crash guards have saved the bike from any major damage. Scratches, a few nuts and bolts missing, and the rear view mirror has got loose, but those seem to be little things. I turn on the engine and it seems fine. So I start to ride.
Then I realize the main issue. The handle is misligned with the front tyre. About 5-10 degrees off. Which is a big problem. As now to keep the bike riding straight I have to hold the handle slightly tilted. While I can ride it, it seems a bit dangerous as I am not yet used to it and don’t know how I would tackle the turns. I am worried by mistake I may cause another accident.
And this is not ergonomically comfortable. The right hand is now closer to my body and left hand has to extend a bit ahead. Coupled with the injury in my hand and being wet and cold, it would start causing numbness in my left hand while riding and I have to frequently shake it, stretch it to keep my hand working.
Yen Minh is close by, so I decide to find a ‘sửa xe’ there and get my bike fixed.
As I rode into Yen Minh, the rain had picked up again.
This is a one street town, all the shops and houses seem to be along this one highway. And in the middle of the day (this is now around 12:30-1 pm) and with the rain, everything seems to be closed.
I ride slowly looking for a bike repair shop, but cannot find any. I feel hungry, but cannot see anything like a restaurant open.
So I ride on till the ATM. I take some cash out, enough to supposedly last me for the rest of the trip as a few locals look and talk about me curiously ( I can recognize ‘người nước ngoài’ in their talk).
Maybe I’ll buy some snacks and have some coffee.
So with the bike parked in front of the ATM, I walk a bit to find a small shop open with a few ladies huddled on their small plastic stools. I try to walk to in and get the attention of the ladies. One of the old ladies shouts something I don’t understand. I shout back ‘coffee’. But she angrily waves me away motioning not to come in.
Same thing happens at the next stop I can find. For whatever reason, covid, foreigner, wet, I feel unwelcome. I was thinking about stopping here for the day, to wait for weather better, but I don’t have hope of finding any accommodation as well.
So I decide to carry on to Dong Van. It is around 2 hours of ride, maybe longer in this rain, but I don’t feel like staying in this town anymore. And I have an accommodation in Dong Van.
So, wet, cold, hungry, injured, with a damaged bike, in the middle of this seemingly ghost town, feeling helpless and a bit humiliated, I get on the bike and continue on the QL4C.
Gagan Dixit 