Sapa-Lao Cai-Ha Giang
After tramping around Sapa to get some information on the apparently intrepid journey to Ha Giang Province, we’re about to give up until we have the good fortune to run into Duc Thien Le, known as Thien at the Cat Cat Hotel in Sapa. We’re pumping him with our by-now standard questions on how and where to take the bus into and across Ha Giang Province. It appears that he is from Ha Giang, and after giving us some basic information—the first that sounds remotely possible or likely, we ask him whether he’d like to come with us for the trip—principally to facilitate transportation and translation. Initially he accepts, but the next day it appears his boss won’t release him, so he very kindly arranges for his brother in Ha Giang to take on the task.
We leave Sapa late on a Thursday afternoon, stay the night in nearby Lao Cai, where we will have to catch the only bus of the day at 6:30am. Lao Cai is predictably swollen with tourists who are waiting for the various overnight trains back to Hanoi, hanging out at various eating/café-like establishments. We finally find a hotel room close to the bus station, and even go and check to see if someone can confirm our morning departure. Everything appears fine, and the next morning we’re at the bus station by 5:45, because we definitely want to secure seats for the 5+ hour journey. The trip goes off without a hitch, and shortly after noon we arrive in drab and uninteresting Ha Giang, where we are met by Tung, Thien’s brother. He puts us in a taxi for the hotel we’re staying in—it’s about 7 km outside town along a river. It’s oppressively hot, and we spend a couple of hours dodging the heat in our very nice room. Mid-afternoon Tung reappears to pick up our passports, as he will take care of getting our special permit to travel in the province. We go back and forth about how to move further north, but finally decide to take a taxi for the day-long trip through the mountains to Dong Van and on to Meo Vac. Once we’re there, we’ll take the public bus back, but we want to have the opportunity to stop and take photographs, and that’s not an option on the bus. The receptionist Cham calls around and finds us a reliable and fairly priced ride, and the next morning Tung shows up with the taxi driver, Tong. Apparently they used to work for the same company, and within moments they’re like old friends, chatting, joking and singing most of the way to Dong Van.
Ha Giang – Dong Van
The scenery is beautiful, and the skies are hazy but clear. We weave through mountain passes, skirt deep valleys, and look over rows and rows of terraces, often cut into steep mountainside, along with recently plowed plots that are just sprouting green. After a few hours of climbing we begin to see the first real karsts. Like in HaLong Bay, where the karst islands dot the horizons, here it is the mountains that are increasingly covered with rough rocky outcrops. At lower elevations they are clad in green, but as we climb ever higher and further into the mountains, there is more and more rock, making cultivation difficult, but no less prevalent. In fact, every spare spot is covered with corn—the most common crop in the area.
We stop for lunch at a roadside eatery, where there is an open fire in the kitchen and the floor is a covered with tossed napkins, chicken bones and other rubbish, but where we are served a reasonable meal—all the standards, boiled cabbage, fried chicken pieces, eggs, rice, and a couple of new things like pickled eggplant. We enjoy our green tea, stretch, and get back in the car. Tong is really getting into his singing, and he and Tung are nattering like a couple of old ladies. We take pictures out of the windows, and also stop to get a closer look at some of the rock formations and the flowering trees we are told are called “silver-leaf trees”. As the day winds on, it appears that Tong has spent some time living in Dong Van, and we begin to make stops to visit his innumerable friends along the route. He has a cat nap at a sort of souvenir stand cum tea house, where his friend polishes and cuts stones, and makes gargantuan marble tables and stools. Since we cannot converse, they pop in a tourist DVD, but continue speaking so loudly, that we finally wander off. Later we stop at the place that Tong says he’ll have his car washed. Again there is tea with the mechanic and his daughter, and then a short walk into the fields where workers are returning from the day’s work and where we’re quickly hurried away as there is an impending dynamite explosion—another path/road being blasted through the rocky peaks. From here it’s on to several other friends and still more tea, until we’re finally in the dusty backwater of Dong Van.
Negotiations between Tung and Tong have been ongoing throughout the day. They seem to be squabbling about whether we’ll stay in Dong Van or go straight to Meo Vac—only a guess, but those are the only recurring words that are identifiable in their conversation. Finally though, we have stopped at a café belonging to a good friend of the driver’s, and some sort of deal(for them) has been struck. We’re to spend the night in an old adobe house down the road. There is one large room with a slew of mattresses and bedding, a perilously steep ladder/stairway, and outside bathrooms with communal toothbrushes that we forego using. We wander down the lane, whilst the nightly loudspeakers blare loudly throughout the town, until we reach the fields and we come right up against the craggy mountains. The whole town looks a bit like a very old and appallingly dusty Western set, and there is precious little to look at in town, but we’ve been told the morning market is fabulous. Tung finds a place for us to eat where he ends up going into the kitchen to supervise the preparation of some fried noodles with a bit of egg. It’s become quite chilly now, and we huddle together in what is basically an outdoor venue. The driver disappears for the evening, and despite the early hour, we head to bed, where we snooze under heavy covers in our clothes.
The loudspeaker finally stops pontificating at 10pm, but then the dogs take over in earnest. All night we’re woken up by fierce sounding hounds, so that by 5am, when the loudspeaker resumes(!), we’re bleary-eyed and a bit cranky, but anxious to get up and face the morning. By 6am the town is in full swing setting up for the weekly market, and while we wander the outskirts of town, people are streaming in from all directions. Unlike other markets there is less color, less traditional wear, and it is strictly for locals in the sense that only essentials are for sale. It is clear that here people are far poorer, but it’s definitely not the visual extravaganza we’ve been led to believe it would be.
Dong Van – Meo Vac
After roaming the market, we meet up with Tung and Tong and we’re off to what promise to be the most spectacular views on the trip. We head up the steadily climbing road out of town, and eventually come to what is a stunning and deeply cut ravine surrounded by jagged mountain peaks all around. This is Vietnam’s Ma Pi Leng Pass—loosely translated as Heaven’s Gate. A narrow road hugs the steep mountainsides, while 2000m below the blue-silver ribbon of the Nho Que river slices through the terrain. Fortunately traffic is very light as there are frighteningly many places where the road is just over one vehicle wide. A recent addition to the road is one of the only stops(in the country, it seems like) for a viewpoint of the jaw-dropping scenery. Our driver Tong is really getting into our photo stops—something we’ve been cultivating so that he’ll be happy about stopping, instead of careening ahead—, and although the skies are hazy, visibility is good. It’s only 20km of road, so in 90 minutes we’ve traversed the pass, and then we’re in the next dusty dorp.
It’s at this point that the driver turns around and heads back to Ha Giang solo, leaving us with Tung in Meo Vac. We check into a small hotel, and then head out to see the local Sunday market, which is rather drab and quiet, except for a knock-down fight between a man and a woman in the clothing area, which locals are quietly watching, not one making the slightest move to intervene. Since we’ve just seen a clone of this market in Dong Van, we leave it behind and head for some of the back roads and explore around town. Tung decides to take the afternoon off and rest, but we head out again in the afternoon, hoping that we’ll perhaps find a place for some food or tea. Despite our best efforts, the town appears to have packed up, and absolutely nothing is available. Andres finds a Coke, but it takes a lot of play-acting to explain that he wants it cold. I ask for tea, having noticed the ubiquitous teapot, but they won’t put the kettle on to make hot tea, and they only have cold left. Nothing is open for a meal, but we manage to buy a few bananas at the rapidly shutting down market, and then walk up into the hills to check out the views.
In the late afternoon we bump into an American couple that have been following the same route we have, and an anxious Floridian, who’s travelling alone and having a devil of a time getting ANY information about how to get on to his next destination. With Tung’s translation help he manages to make some headway, and a bit later we meet at the only open venue for a meal to exchange travel tips. The next morning we run into Phil again, and he’s thrilled that Tung has managed to at least work out something for that day. We also spend some time talking to an intrepid Frenchman who speaks excellent Portuguese with us. He is just about giving up on his original itinerary, and says he’ll probably head back to Hanoi to reconfigure the trip he want to take deep into northeastern Vietnam along the Chinese border. It turns out that the busses simply don’t run the route—or any part of it—at this time. We’ve seen busses back to Ha Giang wandering around town looking for customers, but Tung maintains that we have to catch a later bus, so that’s the way it goes. Hugs all around for the only other tourists in town, and we’re off to Ha Giang once again, this time via Yen Minh, a plus for us since it’s a different route. By late afternoon we’re back in Ha Giang, but we’ve opted to stay in town this time. Tung gives us directions to the bus station and bids us goodbye. A little early, it turns out, since the next day we could have definitely used his Vietnamese and his help.
Despite incorrect directions to the bus station, we do finally find it, and determine that our bus for Lao Cai leaves at 5:30am the next day. There’s even a chart with prices! Amazing!! We ask the hotel to get us a taxi at 4:45 the next morning, and head to bed after a not-so-filling dinner of pineapple. We’re up in the dark, ask the desk to call a taxi, but he can’t seem to find one, so we head off on foot, a mite concerned about wandering off in the pitch black. We’re at the station in about 20 minutes, and again the lady confirms the Lao Cai bus is at 5:30. Five thirty comes and goes, as does 6, and we’re back in the office, trying to make sense of what we’re being told. They send us all over the lot, back to the street, but by 6:30, everyone knows we’re looking for the bus to Lao Cai, when suddenly we’re told there’s no bus today. Within moments another driver comes up and eventually convinces us that he’s going to Lao Cai, although his bus certainly doesn’t indicate that, but we figure it’s this or another looong day in Ha Giang. We get on and Andres again asks Lao Cai? What’s the price? All appears to be settled. Once we move, we’re going about town, back and forth, the standard procedure for picking up passengers. Ever so slowly we crawl out of town. Shortly, the bus stops completely and the driver heads off to have a meal. Back after a bit we move on, and he stops for cigarettes, to chat with people, and finally even to smoke one of the communal pipes that are common in the area. We’ve picked up some other passengers, and there have been what look like moves to convince other roadside travellers(all local) that they’re going to Lao Cai, but these have all staunchly refused to get on the bus. In the meantime, there is all sorts of furious communication going on via mobile phone—both the driver and his tout—and the only word we understand/recognize is Lao Cai. We’re doubtful about the whole enterprise, but figure that although it’s taken almost 3 hours we are at least 50 km closer to Lao Cai.
Moments later the bus stops in the middle of the road, and the driver shouts Lao Cai, gestures across the road to a bus that does indicate Lao Cai as its destination, and begins waving us off the bus. We head across the road, asking the new bus driver about costs, and then all hell begins to break loose. The old driver and tout are yelling after us, we’re yelling at them about not paying both fares, meanwhile scuttling onto the new bus which miraculously still has a couple of seats. It’s at this point that things get ugly. The new bus tout is a serious bully, screaming at us, and totally trying to rob us on the fare. We are still holding out though, and then he grabs me and tries to throw me off the bus. Either we pay his fare or he’ll leave us right there on the road. Sensing defeat, we finally relent. He wants more, but we empty our pockets—and he, too, throws up his hands, forks over some of the loot to the previous driver and tout, and we’re off. A harrowing experience, but all in all, we consider ourselves lucky to be once again underway and a bit later, seriously lucky to have seats. The bus is already quite full, but it suddenly stops and about 15 more people are pushed in. It seems impossible, but they’re sitting all over each other, standing, leaning, and this for the next 4 hours. It’s a nightmarish ride, but we make it to Lao Cai, and an hour later we’re back in Sapa. Just one more story for the road.
No pictures of the bus rides, but here is the scenery to and in Meo Vac.
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