Before we could do the Ha Gaing Loop we had to get out of SaPa, and that proved more challenging than we expected. An hour to go 1.5km in a cab seemed ample but nope, the place was still gridlocked at 8.45am with people leaving the celebrations, so the trip to the bus station ended with us abandoning the cab and running down the middle of the road with bags on our bags in scene straight out of “Race Round the World”.
We arrived at the bus station bang on time, only to find multitudes of buses leaving in all directions except Ha Gaing, my head was swivelling in all directions until I accepted the situation was useless, found our travel agent who said our bus was late and not to panic.
So, at 1030, and after much anxiety, we boarded our sleeper bus to Ha Gaing. This was our first sleeper bus and it was quite an experience; they are beautiful things. I had a flat bed, that sort of propped up, a little cabin with a privacy curtain, lots of switches to fiddle with that changed the lighting atmosphere.
Eventually the bus pulled out, I laid down, and that was that for the next 6 hours, I couldn’t read as I was on my back and the bus rolled around, so I just listened to podcasts and stared out the window and eventually we were dropped off in Ha Gaing, and I certainly wasn’t ready for bed !
Ha Gaing is a nice, clean and friendly town and we stayed at the De La Mont hotel that was really excellent. I went out for a walk and found myself having a beer in a little street café, at which point the clouds opened and once again I was drenched.
Ha Gaing itself seems to have absolutely nothing to do, in the centre, for food there is only very basic street kitchens and getting something to eat proved very difficult, so not a place to hang around. For such a famous location, tourism seems to have passed the main town by, I guess the bikers must stay out of town in hostels or something.
Next day, we were picked up for the Ha Gaing loop tour by our guide Mr Happy, and things took a definite turn for the better. We had a nice SUV to travel in and we had a guide who spoke excellent English and was clearly going to be a bundle of fun, so we settled down to 3 days of good company.
The Ha Gaing Loop can be many different routes, using the road system that runs through the mountains of Northern Vietnam and along the border with China, The actual route you take will depend on your tour guide and mode of transport, and as we set out from Ha Gaing it was raining again and I was feeling very smug that I had chosen the SUV option as we watched the bikers in their waterproofs huddling from the rain.
Mr Happy was a great guy and taking us to all the interesting places. The scenery is quite stunning, the Limestone Karst landscape in the Dong Van Geopark is covered in little peaks that jut out of valleys and mountains full of caves.
Unfortunately, the views on the first day we spoiled by the low cloud and fog, but that is life. We went to see the Booby Mountains, basically two hills side by side that look like a pair of tits and everyone does this photo!
This area of Vietnam literally was bandit country, ruled by warlords over the centuries and they seemed to take a lot of delight in beating of the Chinese and more latterly the imperial French. They united under one leader in the 20th century and is one of their legendary figures, so we visited his palace, which wasn’t very exciting but had to be done.
Eventually we arrived in the down of Dong Van, our tour operator had organised a decent hotel which was nice. After a quick scrub up we went out for dinner with Mr Happy. We ended up in a big dining warehouse with lots of other groups who were travelling by bike, it was at this point things took an unexpected turn of events when we were introduced to the local custom of toasting and drinking Happy Water.
Happy Water appeared with the drink made from corn, (in other parts of Vietnam it can be made from rice) and upon tasting it you know immediately that this is not going to end well. Mr Happy was a very enthusiastic distributor of Happy Water and very keen on the toasting game that each group was doing, even though there were only 3 of us, we got roped into the game too.
At this point, Mr Happy developed an even happier personality, very akin to Mr Chow from the Hangover films. Before we knew it, we were standing on tables and doing lots of toasting. One of the groups had an American sport teacher who was very used to this chanting idea and adopted Wooksie and taught her how to lead entire room in chorus.
When dinner was over, Mr Happy took us on a tour of a surprisingly lively little down that had been taken over my groups of people on bike trips. We ended up in the main square in some sort of community dancing game that made as much sense as the toasting game, but it was a lot of fun.
Mr Happy was on a roll now, we were oblivious to the time and next stop was a karaoke bar, where everyone from dinner had gathered. The Vietnamese bike riders were enthusiastically tucking away the Happy Water and every other Karaoke song was in Vietnamese and they joined in with gusto, then we would have a Western song, where we all joined in with gusto and the night rolled on into the early hours.
Mr Happy assured us that nobody gets a hangover from Happy Water, which I found hard to believe, so we drank beer as he sourced more Happy Water and headed off to join his local pals. Eventually we headed back to the hotel and agreed a 7am start wasn’t necessary and we would see him at 9.30am, which was definitely a good plan.
To be honest, Happy Water did leave us with clear heads in the morning, the only problem was we hadn’t gone to bed till the early hours.
Next morning, the sun was out, the weather warmed up, we connected our phone to the Bluetooth in the car and we headed off on day 2 of the Ha Gaing Loop.
Here is the full story of our big night out
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