Saturday 23 April 2016

Around Vietnam on motorbike - Extreme North

Bac Ha - Tan Quang via Coc Pai/ Vinh Quang  - Yen Minh - Bao Lac via Dong Van/ Meo Vac - Cao Bang - cca 600 km

After mighty Pho breakfast we kicked our black horse and went further north direction to Coc Pai. 20 kms further north we got a bit lost and turned off to the right little bit early. After next 10 kms we realised that this road can’t be the main one to Xin Man and went back. Costly 20 kms as the terrain was pretty steep and rough, it took us almost an hour.

Colourful vs dirt
Coc Pai is located already in Ha Giang province, the most northern province in Vietnam. As far from the resources as possible and it’s definitely feelable on the state of roads. As soon as we reached province border, beautiful new road changed to stones and dirt and last 10 kms downhill to Coc Pai was rough tough nuff. Most of the road between Bac Ha and Coc Pai is in higher altitude with crazy views to Chinese borders just over the river in the valley ( which you can’t see as you’re some 1000 m higher ).

China is just behind that mountain
Coc Pai is rather little town and worth just quick coke stop on the way. After crossing of river north of the town narrow road copies mountain slope for next 40 kms to Vinh Quang.

Yeah that used to be road ;)
Almost deserted, in much better state than the road above Coc Pai, winding above shallow river, meeting in every other corner a waterfall.

Very enjoyable ride between Coc Pai and Vinh Quang
Definitely one of the greatest motorbike rides in long time. You don’t go straight for more than 200 meters, but the curves are not too sharp either so you can see next corner and oncoming traffic.

Almost no traffic and easy winding tarmac
We reached Vinh Quang around 3 pm and were not really sure whether to continue further ( some 70 km to next civilisation) or to stay overnight here and relax a bit. After 5 minutes stand up meeting we reached decision to go further and risk it.

Clean shallow river
We made our progress slowly and within an hour we reached first pass in altitude around 1000 m from here the road copies several mountains slopes ( covered with tea plantations ) and goes little up and down for long time. Very winding road with incredible views over forested peaks and rice filled valleys. Again waterfalls are present in almost every turn, we called this road "Waterfall road".

For 70 km the road copies the mountain somewhere in the middle of the slope
We started our descent just with the last sunlight and reached Tan Quang town little bit after dusk.

Bye Bye Sunny, see you tomorrow
Having Ha Giang just some 40 kms north the road we got up early again and pushed while the morning was fresh. By 10 am we were in Ha Giang looking around to find Nha Sach ( book shop) and after 2 circles around the town we found one but unfortunately we didn’t find any decent tourist road maps. So we had to survive with few xerox copies we’re given of the loop north of Ha Giang.

It’s important to mention one of our most useful online sources - www.vietnamcoracle.com.

If you’re heading to any part of Vietnam definitely check what Tom has written about it and you’ll find at least one or two articles providing a lot of useful information about the area under your radar.

The same was the case of Extreme north Ha Giang loop and many more roads we took later on through whole Vietnam.

Being little bit under weather caused time pressure we decided to risk it and at the end we've beaten the weather by few minutes.

Roads above Ha Giang are different than anywhere else in South East Asia, crossing countless ridges and constantly changing landscapes. There is a loop which might take you 2 - 5 days depending on how much time you have and what is the weather forecast.

Roads between Dong Van and Meo Vac are extremely dangerous in bad visibility, so in case of rainy forecast re-think the whole idea.

Our forecast was 2 warm days of sun and blue sky, followed by change in wind direction to north east bringing very cold air, for a change from China again.

First day we managed to get to Yen Minh little bit ahead of the sunset and wandered around a little bit, tiny town with not much going on, except market area, which is very busy with minorities tribal people in colorful costumes (specially saturdays / sundays).

The scenery starts to be really interesting after passage through “heavens gate pass”. Karsts mountains stretch as far as one can see.

View from Heavens Gate pass
Photos describe this beauty far better than words.

Little boobs
And more boobs ;)
Welcome to mountains north of Ha Giang - it's starting to be interesting 
Land of blue rivers and steep green hills
Go straight !
Shopping happens on almost every bridge, interesting market setup
Slowly climbing higher and higher
Sunset above Yen Minh
Next morning we got up early, scored Pho in a place where we had couple of beers night before and buggered off to wonderland.

Long smoked pork.... Yummy !
This was the day “D”.

This place is called Natural book of Earth, geologically very unique area in South East Asia
Where will the road take us ?
Higher ?
Higher ?
Oh yeah ! Much higher !
Half way to Dong Van
Yes this little motorbike can do it !
Each valley is different !
Locals hanging out in one of the passes
Little detour to Chinese border
Almost touching chinese border, road from Yen Minh passes through plateau of prehistoric  black lava sediments which are now and then dotted with rare grass, bushes or odd tree.

Here we go ! Vietnam - China pre-border checkpoing, you can go further if you offer enough Dongs :) but Chinese will turn you back ...
Fertile valleys are fully agricultured 
Life can be harsh and simple
Very arid and unusual landscape. But the road up to the first pass of the day is majestic.

You have to look back everytime you stop
Swimming pool of local kids
As soon you enter first pass above Yen Minh, every next valley hides some unique beauties.

Beauty in rocky heaven
It's getting steeper !
Except of this road there are smaller concrete paths to explore, come and spend a week in Surrealand 
Some dozen kilometers ahead of Dong Van, there is old citadel still in decent condition. Once upon the time, mighty king was living here and was ruling this bizarre end of the world.
Insinde of old citadel
Dong Van looked like a good place to base yourself for further exploration with long ridge of limestone just north of the town, some large entrance caves visible from far distance, high viewpoint and probably much more.

Unfortunately the weather forecast was still same, warning us about strong wind bringing sharp temperature drop and possibly some rain.

We drove through the town, topped up our tank, checked out market which was completely over at 1pm and quarter of hour later we had our backs facing Dong Van while getting up to some crazy hills.

Building road here might be easier than harvesting enough rice ...
Scarce trees
Jagged ridges above Dong Van
Road through Surrealand
Getting higher again
Section between Dong Van and Meo Vac is not comparable with any other road we took during our whole journey. Road is winding 1000 m above the river cutting through deepest gorge in Indochina.

RaT on the way to Meo Vac
Getting to the best section of the road
Mapileng gorge - deepest gorge in Indochina
One mistake on this “Most dangerous road in Vietnam” as locals call it and your rests will feed catfish for couple of days :)

Just amazing !
Karsts on steroids as one could call this. Not small hills but whole mountains rising so sharp from the valley that’s almost hard to believe that the road can exists there. Vietnamese love to build in crazy conditions.

Blind corners after Mapileng pass
Original plan was to reach Meo Vac by late afternoon, but we got there little bit earlier. The next signalised location was crossroad with QL 34 some 50 km further south and somewhere there was supposed to be next town with accomodation - Bao Lac.

Shortly behind Meo Vac the mountains go back to the style similar earlier on the road between Bac Ha and Ha Giang.

Rice fields on the way to Cao Bang
The road slowly descends for most of those 60 kms and traffic is very light in comparison with the road to Dong Van full of buses and bigger cars.

At the end of the descend is a series of little villages with terrible roads and locals driving nuts across all terrain.

Couple of Hydroelectric projects are being built in the area and that definitely doesn’t make the road state better.

The sky slowly changed its colour from bright blue to dark grey and stormy easterly wind started blowing.

When we reached the crossroad, there was no accommodation available at all and Bao Lac was supposed to be located 20km further east. First 5 kms were probably the worst public road we tried in Vietnam :) 1st gear on flat ground full of foot deep holes and huge stones laying everywhere. Finally the worst was over and we’re racing with the wind blowing hard into our faces from the threatening rain.

The change of the weather was stinking in the air.

Quite exhausted after 8 hours of beautiful riding we reached Bao Lac right after dusk, located decent Nha Nghi and went to eat some Frango Churrasco !

Next morning it fell like a different continent. The temperature drop from sweet 28 to 12 degrees... Back in hard core winter ...

After thorough check of topological map on Google it looked like there might be just one pass around 1000 m on our following section to Cao Bang.

The vision of frozen fingertips and knees stuck in bent angles again was frightening.

Land of blue rivers and green hills 2
But at the end the cold was not that bad. It forced us to have short breaks wherever there was kettle with warm tea visible. The journey was not that exceptional as it followed day of something very unique. The closer you get to Cao Bang the better the road condition is and you can see some karst features again.

On the way to Cao Bang - karsts reappear
Main produce in winter season is sugar cane, on some places you meet dozens of ladies selling it by the road
And for a change more karsts on the way to Cao Bang
Cao Bang was our first “bigger city” of North. Even Dien Bien Phu didn’t feel that hectic and "high streety" as Cao Bang.

Blocked off entrance to one of the caves close to Cao Bang
We found really new and clean hotel which charged just 8 Eur (200.000 VND) for good room (no window though, but clean, cheap with huge telly full of cable channels ;)

It seems like Lau is the local dish. Called “Hot Pot” in english, tasty and easy way how to make good money. Buy 10 portable gas stoves, 10 pots, loads of vegetables, some beef, chicken or fish, rice noodles and let the people cook it the way they like it right on their table !

Almost no work and solid amount of profit. Average price of Lau for 2 people was around 300.000 VND (12 Eur), approximately 3 times more than what you would pay for food cooked in kitchen (understand few pots prepared on charcoal fire) .

We took refuge in our classic Pho, drank few beers on the street and headed to bed early.

Next morning we discovered that our bag rack needs some love and without immediate action it might crack fully and leave our bags rolling behind into the abyss of Vietnamese road.

Young boys on the main street in big city prefer to change batteries and sell new stickers over old school manual craftsmanship :).

Instead of welding they would sell new bag rack. We love our current one, it had to be fixed !

The guy who looked like he could have welding machine and a lot of various mess going on was the one, located just a bit on the outskirts off the main road. Instead of English he was keen to talk in German :) He worked in Germany some 10 years ago and learnt basic chat. It’s great to meet someone this way different in vast Vietnamese culture :) After 30 minutes the welding massage therapy was over and reinforced bag rack, sprayed black was ready to take some load again.

Full gear on and with strong commitment to reach Lang Son by sunset we left harbour before midday. Not early but not too late for the distance (some 130 km) at least one would think ...

For first 15 kms everything went smooth, until we reached first 10 % climb. Full power on 4th gear trying to maintain the speed of our little comet but slowly loosing power, suddenly all the way in 2nd gear and even less power and boom, we’re stopped and the engine was not running anymore.

Kick starter not moving even one spin forward. Oops ;)

Facing downhill, trying to roll start the thing and on clutch release the bike stopped as the engine would not move at any cost.

That didn’t look good at all.

None of us remembered where was the last mechanic on the road, but pushing our heavy load uphill didn't make any sense.

One of the strangest moments are when you roll downhill in silence with engine turned off and knowing it won’t start without some deeper surgery. The joy from every meter reached further without need to push but knowing that the end of this rock&roll song is ending very soon ...

It would not be Viet Nam, if there wasn’t mechanic who could fix your baby somewhere in next corner.

First house at the end of the hill was the one !

Firstly thinking that it might be just missing oil, later on organising delivery of the parts from Cao Bang and taking apart every part of the engine to get to broken heart - crank shaft.

Worn out crank shaft on the rod was getting to locking position not letting go forward.

How many more core parts will we need to replace on this journey ?

We spent the rest of the day sipping warm tea, watching big trucks rolling down the hill and roaring loud to get out their way ( raising kids along some of the roads in Viet Nam has to be very difficult ).

So that was our 2nd major breakdown, the price to get it fixed was similar to new gearbox, some 800.000 VND. ( 32 Eur)

We’re saved again and could go further, but it was not midday anymore. 5 pm on the clock and no commitment to go for possibly heavy terrain night ride.

On the way back to last nights hotel we picked “cold pot” - leftovers from lunch in one eatery on the road close to centre. Cheap it was, but it had side effects next morning ...

Following adventures are covered in next post.

Oy moy Bia Hoi !