The Road to Ha Giang

Ok. I think two weeks has washed the bad taste out of my mouth.  I'm prepping to travel again.  With three weeks to go before I leave Vietnam, I think I'm going to head down to Singapore, then Borneo.

What bad taste, you may ask.  The bad taste from Ha Giang, that's what.  Billed as the 'most gorgeous scenery in Vietnam' by Lonely Planet, Ha Giang was going to be an extended weekend away from Hanoi for Vinny and I.  Roads that hugged the mountains. Motorbiking up above clouds.  Verdant valleys.  That's what we figured awaited us when we made plans for the trip. Oh, if we could have turned back time.

Ha Giang is only served by buses. Small buses.  Not really buses, more like vans. Made-in-Vietnam vans, from the 1980s, when there wasn't really an auto industry.  Ok, so there really isn't an auto industry now, but back then, back then Vietnam was piecing together American parts left over from that 'little war' to make its cars.  That's what we rode to Ha Giang, and promptly the next day, subjected our aching bodies once again to ride back to Hanoi.

Why did we only spend one day in Ha Giang? Oh, I'll get to that later.  But for now, back to the bus ride.

At first I thought I was being mugged.  "So, this is what being abused feels like," I remembered thinking, as hands grabbed my backpack through the taxi windows and shoved me towards dark corners.  By the time I checked, Vinny had been dragged to the other side of the almost vacant lot.  It was 2 am, and we had crossed the Red River to get to the Gia Lam bus station where, as we found out, was the only departure time for the Hanoi-to-Ha Giang buses.

Vietnamese voices barked, hands grabbed, and bodies pressed alarmingly close. I pushed a guy off as another latched on.  Two foul smelling guys pulled me in opposite directions.  Ah. We were not being mugged, just pushed onto separate buses.  They weren't thieves. They were competitors.  I think Vinny punched a guy. Like swarms of flies, they continued to buzz around us.

I got on one bus, and, regrettably, I yelled to Vinny to follow me.  It took me a couple of minutes to gauge my surroundings, but by that time, it was too late.  The other bus had pulled out of the station, already full passengers.  Our bus, however, parked there for another 40 minutes before lurching onto the highway.  Twenty minutes in, the driver circled back to the station to pick up a forgotten package. 

In addition to the human cargo, the bus also handled deliveries.  Inside our van, I counted (as I drifted in and out of REM):

• Two women who vomited at each hairpin
• Two wailing babies
• One bag of sweet potatoes
• Three metal rods
• Four sacks of mysteries
• A BubbleJet printer
• A Sony TV
• A sack of letters
• One motorcycle
• Three bed frames (and headboards)
• Three mattresses
• Three men who lit up the entire trip
• Assorted villagers and phlegm hackers and the like
• 4 cardboard boxes

In any case, the bus to Ha Giang was better than the bus from Ha Giang.  How so?  A twenty seater van is not meant to pack in 35 sweaty passengers – but that's what the return van did.. The driver, for the first three hours, slowed on dirt roads leading away from villages as his accomplice reeled in gaping villagers and their squirming luggage.  At one point, I found that I was pressed against the window, one butt-cheek crushed against the hard seat, the other up in the air, my right elbow lodged in my abdomen while the left elbow rested on the headrest above me, knees scrunched up to my chest, and all the while a woman next to me cocked her head on my shoulder, snoring.

The time between Hanoi and Ha Giang? 8 miserable ass-swelling hours. Times two.

As with most travel-caps, it's the trip that is the most interesting.  As for Ha Giang? It was a one road town, a bus depot on the way to more exciting sights.  Except we couldn't get to those sights.  Much to our chagrin (and something the effin' Lonely Planet writers didn't mention), the area borders China and still sees skirmishes with the Red Kingdom.  Poverty is rampant, and the government hasn't put on the prerequisite varnish ('rah-rah Ho Chi Minh our Hero') on for tourists (especially Vietnamese-American travelers) yet.

But memorable experiences abound as we trudged from impassive faces to smiling masks!

• A comrade – all bitch and temper – refused to stamp our travel permits while practicing that perfect Communist combination of ignorance and superiority.
• Shady xe om (motorcycle taxi) guys offered to take us on non-existent tours, circling like vultures and spreading our predicament via their mobiles so that by the second hour of our stay, random guys drove up to us hawking ludicrous tours.
• The hotel owner offered to send up to our dingy room 'massage services' while under-aged girls blackened with mascara twittered on the floor beneath – pressing us to have 'tea' with them and 'relax' with the hotel's employees.
• The local police pointed us to a non-existent tour guide, and then to a tour operator whose prices climbed to new heights as the sun set. At 9 pm, a guy representing the tour knocked on our door and re-negotiated the price we had agreed to in the afternoon.

But it was the food that was the last straw. The boiled vegetables and the vaguely rotten fish did us in. As Vinny said when we picked over the fish bones, "I can stand a lot, but this – this is a low point. I don't know if I can go on."

We left at 4 am the next day, sticking out our thumbs as a van blinked by.  Somehow, in our calculations, we figured that another 8 hours of hell would be better than staying in the town.  At one point in the return van, curious Vietnamese peered back at Vinny and I and asked, "Why the hell are you on this van? Can't Americans travel better? Why didn't you just rent a car." I smiled, my only possible response.  "I'm getting used to it," I said.

"Don't you love it? Don't you love Vietnam" they chorused, eerily mimicking that vapid Hilton.

"Yeah, sure do," we chimed.

Fun trip!!! And I thought the bus ride I took with Vinny from Lao Cai to Sapa was interesting!

I assume you're going Malaysian Borneo? Let me know how Sarawak and Sabah are. I want to climb Kinabalu!

Selamat Jalan! Happy Travels!

Posted by: Sharon | May 02, 2006 at 05:24 AM

yeah, i want to hit sarawak.. but will definitely give ya my impressions!

Posted by: j.fisher | May 02, 2006 at 06:08 AM

Oh sweet memories.....SWEET MEMORIES INDEED!

Posted by: vinny | May 10, 2006 at 02:08 AM

Dude - memories indeed. Travelling by myself in Malaysia – you should see the beaches. Oh well, it was nice to have you as witness to the nightmare.

Posted by: j.fisher | May 11, 2006 at 02:58 AM