North east coast - Bai Tu Long bay

Vietnam - North-East Coast -  cca 550 km

Cao Bang - Tien Yen via Lang Son - Van Don via Cam Pha - Quan Lan - Ha long - Hanoi via Hai Phong

Entering Bai Tu Long Bay

With brand new sport crank shaft made in Viet Nam we were flying again ! The road was less hilly from now on and if there was less trucks it would be quite enjoyable ride. Some 40 kms after Cao Bang we entered section of road works. That stretched for maybe an hour, dirt and rocks on the road covered with thick layer of limestone dust. Every vehicle coming in opposite direction created white cloud formed of tiniest dust particles.

Face mask would be handy on this road for sure. Having none, we tried to breath less and slowed down even more. Somewhere close to the end of road work, our chain jumped off again. In first town to come we stopped at mechanics shop and got persuaded to change both the chain and chain wheels. Another 200.000 VND invested wisely. These parts claimed to be made in Thailand :)

Around 20 kms ahead of Lang Son we first time ever experienced traffic on the busiest road in Vietnam.

Highway 1 stretches from Chinese to Cambodian border below Ho Chi Min city, making it vital artery for both passenger and goods transportation. American size trucks, buses, building machines and many smaller size vehicles are howling up and down with non stop verve.

There are very simple rules you need to follow on Vietnamese roads.

Following general rules apply :

1. There is enough space on the road only for the biggest of us.
The bigger, the better, if you ride motorbike, you are expected to get off the road when bigger is overtaking the biggest. They will tell you with strong light and sound signal that they’re coming :)

2. It’s not my business what is happening behind me.
Most of motorbikes don’t have even one mirror and rarely turn the head to have a look before they do next move !

3. Driver turning right from any kind of road has all the time right of the way.
Only fraction of drivers will look left before joining roads.

4. Driving direction is not fixed
In theory you should ride on the right side of the road, in practice expect people everywhere. It’s not uncommon to meet building truck on the highway in opposite direction, maximum shortening of distances is very present.

All the time leave little bit of space on your right side for others coming opposite direction.

5. Blow the horn and keep your speed!
To inform you’re coming rather than to tell that something is wrong. Expect very loud blasts from big trucks and buses. Stay calm and keep riding, they will pass in short time.

Don’t expect that someone would ever stop on crossroads, keep slow speed, blow the horn and join the flow.

Additional rule for dual carriage roads:

6. Going right means going left !!!
Truck indicating change of direction to right will turn across the whole road and possibly block all lanes. You’re the one to see that happening in front of you, you’re responsible for slowing down.

You learn all of these rules progressively, depending on the road you take :)
From our own experience mountain roads are much quieter with few exceptions.
You go faster on flat land, but the traffic is tougher so it’s little bit more tiring.

In Lang Son we grabbed street kebab on one of the main crossroads, got little bit lost and found at the end ;) We’re headed direction to Ha Long and Bai Tu Long bays.

Passing lowland areas east of Lang Son until last light when we reached Tien Yen, small agglomeration of houses in the crossroad.

Small and definitely not the cleanest guest house right on the crossroad served as our sanctuary for a night.

Little bit overpriced but quite tasty food, Tien Yen does the job for overnight but there isn’t much more to do than eat and sleep :)

Next morning we set off direction to Cam Pha and further to Van Don which is in the heart of Bai Tu Long Bay.

Bai Tu Long Bay was advised by some people we met travelling as astonishing and very similar to Ha Long Bay but much less touristic and not crowded.

Cam Pha is famous for biggest coal quarry in Asia. And it’s not small indeed, for many kilometers you pass mountains of black coal being ripped apart by heavy machinery and moved to industrial areas around.

Environment impact is more than palpable ! Black grey dust settled on everything around.
Tough dust particles hit you right in your nostrils and stay glued inside.

Anyway we stopped on the outskirts to get Banh My into our starving stomachs and moved further toward Van Don.

Little town with busy port area dealing mainly with molluscs production in surrounding waters around sharp limestone islands. Perfectly calm sea between the islands proofed to be amazing feeding grounds for mussels. There are floating villages maintaining this long running process and selling them further to traders on main land.

Tasty buckets

Mussel farms protected by stone dog

We arrived still quite early and rolled our Hwin Dee directly to the end of main pier. We didn’t expect much attention but that was wrong assumption :)

Choose your destination

Within few seconds we got surrounded by crowd of people all trying to persuade us to take their boat and go somewhere :) We’d go for sure, but not knowing where to go in first place we wrote down the locations they were offering and promised to come back next day.

The sky was still white and grey but standing on the sandy beach again, after 2 months inland, makes you feel happy.

Dragon teeth all around

We followed main road out of the bustling centre towards the end of the island and finally you could see lot of sharp rocks jagging out of the bay from quite close proximity.

Fully loaded

Surrounded by rice paddies and salt production pools one can get lost on small tracks discovering paths which might lead somewhere just to find out they don’t :)

Lucky, this path led to secret beach

Couple of long white sand beaches are to be found further north on the road just before you reach Chinese influenced Buddhist temple.

View of Bai Tu Long Bay from Van Don beach

View from the top of Buddhist temple

We spent rest of the day discovering little bit around, looking for secret beaches and drinking Ha Long beer with locals on the road :)

Bia Ha Long

In the evening we did some research for next day island trip. We chose Quan Lan island for 2 reasons - 1. it was closer than Co To, 2. supposedly there are some of the longest white sand beaches in Vietnam.

Dramatic surroundings around the beaches

Where is that hidden treasure ?

Getting up with dawn was easier than we thought, and we managed to catch first ferry around 7.30. We planned to spend max. 2 nights on the island and come back on Sunday to get to Ha Long for Monday morning.

From the mountains to the beach

and further

After 2 hours of slow cruise firstly deep through inner Bai Tu Long bay and later through open sea we reached tiny jetty on the island.

Rock solid brand new boat

Karsts from the water

Real fun just started - unloading on Quan Lan island

Being one of the most east located islands in whole bay it receives strong winds which formed massive dune systems along the whole east coast.

Rat in Bai Tu Long bay

Little sleepy town called Quan Lan is just few kms north of the jetty and it’s connected by deserted tarmac road.

Watch out for heavy traffic !

There is actually just one road on the island :) connecting northern end (another tiny jetty can be found here) with southern end jelly fish production factory.

Jelly fish port on the southern part of the island

Couple of guest houses are aligned along the main 2 streets in the town, we chose first one which looked new and open :)

Price was very reasonable and there was an offer of home cooked dinner. What a great future ! Homestay food surpasses any other meals by miles !

Forget Michellin stars, Vietnam stars is what's all about ! - Spring rolls and mussels :) 

We dropped the bags and went to explore the beaches !

Almost all of the east coast is covered by sandy beaches. Now and then they are separated by rocky capes. Wide with big tides difference, hard packed and squishy white sand, most of the rubbish blown into dunes behind the beach, it looked cleaner than it was in reality.

Vast tidal beach

Unfortunately it was still just around 12 degrees so it wasn’t really inviting for a dip. I can imagine that in high season when local tourists swarm the island it has to look much different.

Traditional fishermen - Vietnam style

During our visit we’re literally alone. Only when we’re leaving the island we spotted group of young foreigners who just arrived.

SUP Vietnam style - polystyrene block

We filled the day with full exploration of the island, sand quarries, jelly fish processing plant, all beaches and 2 old temples. At the end of the day we got little bit lucky again and on the way back from the southern end of the island our head gasket blew up again. With raging sound and almost no torque we just managed to get back to the town.

Perfect place to try how this bike actually works :)

Isolated places like this can proof to be tricky when you need to get something fixed.

One bike repair guy was out of the town, supposedly coming back at night, car repair place didn’t have tools small enough for our tiny engine and it looked like the guys are better friends with blowtorch than with spanners :)

We gave them a chance but after 10 minutes of watching them I had to take over, stop their mission with thanks, but no thanks. We left their open air workshop with few screws and exhaust off to discover that there is another bike repair guy further down the main street.

Half rolling half pushing the bike we reached the pit stop, trying to explain to young guy what’s wrong. English is not really known in these lands and usual point it communication didn’t seem to make an effect. The guy was pretty sure that the trouble is with spark cable and possibly somewhere else much deeper and was trying to push us away to come back in 3 hours.

As a reply I took his spanners and in 3 minutes stripped down the head from cylinder and showed him blown gasket !

Finally the understanding was on the table :)

During his earlier check of spark plug he damaged spark plug cable so it had to be replaced at the end ...

Finally we got to the last step, reaching payment agreement. Surrounded by dozen of local teenagers it wasn’t easy either. Some ridiculous number like 10 USD was mentioned and that didn’t hit fertile ground :)

After little argument we paid 5 USD which was still little bit too much for the whole action, but it got us back on the road again.

Percebes where you wouldn't expect them

Second day we got our laundry done after quite long period.
Around 9 AM our land lady came pointing her finger into clothes basket, we understood very well.

For almost a month we’re travelling through dirt and dust of tough northern provinces and our clothes looked far away from clean :) Obviously it has been spotted and had to be dealt with :)

With strong wind blowing all day it was all dry within few hours, what a nice feeling to be in clean clothes for a change :) - it usually doesn’t last longer than a day :)

The rest of the day was dedicated to long walk on deserted beach :)

After 2 amazing dinners in our little guest house we’re ready to head back to main land early in the morning.

On the way back to Van Don

Same crew, same ferry and same grey sky.

Who's the captain ?

Chinese chess - at this point we had no idea what's this game about

boat of Vietnam - Czech friendship

We got back to Van Don early in the afternoon and headed further 60 kms south to reach Ha Long city.

Boat towing a boat

Bai Tu Long floating village

Approaching Van Don

Our main goal for Ha Long was to extend our Visa by one month. We read on-line that it should be possible at Immigration office in every provincial capital.

Life on the board of mussel man house boat

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is ;) (Albert Einstein)

We’ve got to Immigration office even before they were opened so keen to get it done and head further south !

It’s been almost 2 months since we dealt with bureaucracy of Vietnamese apparatus. We forgot that it can be quite difficult mission.

Local officers were pretty straight forward and their message was quite clear - “No it’s impossible to get tourist visa extension here”.

We tried hard for 15 minutes but final result was negative.
We’re told that as holders of “Tourist Visa” we can either extend on our own in Hanoi at Immigration HQ or we have to have a sponsor (Tourist Agent).

We tried few little agencies located in main touristic area, but unfortunately with same result. It would take at least 10 days to get it done.

We didn’t believe that it can’t be done on our own and wanted to proof that even impossible can be made possible.

Even though we planned to skip Hanoi, now we had no other choice. We could either ride for 4 hours on a bike and join rush hour in crazy Hanoi traffic or there was an option to reach Hanoi by train from Hai Phong.

Astronauts are ready to take off into rainy universe

Drive to Hai Phong was pretty fast and we got there hour ahead of the train.
Compared with the cost of fuel, the train is expensive. We did it just to make our life easier, how naive :)

Plastic spaceship docking in front of Hai Phong train station - don't forget to drain your fuel and hide it well :)

Instead of reaching main train station in central Hanoi we got dropped on north east outskirts station with explanation that this is the last station where you can get your motorbike out, because this train doesn’t go all the way to main station. oops...

So there we were, somewhere ahead of us was Hanoi, sun was setting and traffic was getting more than crazy :)

All info we had at that point was that we have to cross Red river and we should be in central Hanoi :)

Following our orientation sense we got directly lost and the traffic was suddenly getting easier and at some point we’re alone on the road. That didn’t look like the right way to Hanoi.

So we asked and found out that we have to turn 180 degrees and head back :) Couple of minutes of crazy chaos, one long old bridge crossing and suddenly we were in central old town.

Buzzing with final success we looked for some cheaper place to stay and found Blue Hostel for 5 USD / head in dormitory. Not great, not too bad, it did the job for couple of nights.

With backpacks resting in our bed, motorbike parked and locked in front of the guest house we wandered off to night Hanoi. Thirsty and hungry. After long time without seeing tourists of same origins it fell quite pleasant to drink some beers and chat to random people.

That night we got little bit hammered - 25 watery beers cost us just 5 USD :)

Next adventures are covered in following posts.