The hidden gem in motorcycling riding, a ride into Vietnam’s wild North East is a proper motorcycling journey to a place where time stands still.
You drop a gear, power the Honda XR250 through the upwards curl in the road as the engine note rises several notches. You’re past the tent where the bored Vietnamese soldier languishes, and the country suddenly opens up. As far as the eye can see are teeth – ragged and perfectly shaped conical karst limestone mountains that sprout from the ground like the skeletal remains of an ancient primordial dragon that had plummeted to earth.
The land is startlingly green. As you drift the bike to the side of the road, your eyes take it all in – the padi fields rustling and rippling in the early afternoon sunshine, the precipitous drops, the terrace fields craved into the sheer mountainside, the drove of bleating goats that swarm around you and clamber over the side looking for green shoots. This is the reward – that long hot ride from Hanoi is worth the effort.
You’re on a narrow spit of a road, hugging the side of the mountain, and to the left of the road is a sheer fall. The 30 odd kilometers from Dong Van to Meo Vac on QL4C, though short, is probably the best 30 kilometers of asphalt you’re going to find anywhere in South East Asia. The serpentine road is a roller coaster of sights as it leapfrogs from one mountain to another as you savour the looming cliffs and gorges.
It’s been a hard road getting here. From Hanoi’s old city on my US$30 a day Honda XR250 it meant a dusty and humid ride on highways and backroads before I got to Ha Giang, the sleepy provincial capital of north east Vietnam, and gateway to the most amazing landscape in South East Asia bar none. The distance from Hanoi is a deceptive 300 kilometers, because it took a good 7 hours before the scenery got green and cooler, before the traffic fell away to be replaced by curious bystanders and slow moving bicycles.
Crammed into the north eastern slice of Vietnam and hemmed in by China, the Ha Giang district is devoid of any highways. Most roads are single lane, narrow and a pure delight on a motorcycle. The QL4C from Ha Giang to Meo Vac is a magical strip of road about 150 kilometers long. Leaving Ha Giang in the morning, the frontier road meanders past seductively swaying padi fields and gurgling streams before it begins a steady climb. The scenery is astoundingly different from the day before. The straight blacktop and monotonous industrial landscape of the ride from Hanoi is replaced by a thin sinuous ribbon of a road that has a mind of its own as it turns on itself several times, and the countryside is now a thatch panorama of green and gold of different crops. And they stretch out endlessly, creeping up the steep mountains as every bit of arable land is exploited.
Meo Vac is the sleepy provincial capital. There are few hotels and even fewer tourists. Facilities are basic and all activities center along the main football field – beer and food stalls spring up from breakfast till late evening. It’s a perfect place to rest up after a good day of riding with a beer while watching the noisy football game in those low chairs as the sun drops behind a sharp pointy isosceles of a mountain.
Using Meo Vac as the hub, there is a web of roads that trundled over the mountains to far flung villages along the Chinese border. Jumping nimbly from one mountain to another under deep blue skies the road take a crazy zigzag path along the limestone behemoths. Others plunge downhill into the valley, following the folds in the land, and you can play like the locals and switch your bike off and coast. It’s easy to lose yourself here, riding the dragon’s tail. Or if you prefer something a bit more thrilling you can jump off-road and follow the tiny dirt trails that wind perilously close to farms a bit off the roads.
The trusty XR250 was earning its keep, the single cylinder keeping a good rhythm despite the hairpin turns and elevation climbs. I kept going, the road kept amazing me till finally at the top the scenery was laid open and the Chinese border beckoned. A large stone obelisk marked the border, and that was about as far as you could go as the border was only for locals.
Farmers with sunburned skin and wide brimmed hats and lumbering, snorting beast of burden till the land – slivers of plot etched painstakingly into the mountainside, creating tumbling, terraced fields, like plates stuck into the mountain by a giant. Despite the lack of machinery, the land is furrowed into neat lines. On other farms the golden rice is being harvested by hand, squatting women cutting the stalks at the base with a sharp sickle.
The pastoral scenes of harnessed buffaloes and farmers with their hoes hark to a long lost time, a romantic notion of working in the fields with your hands, but it is a deceptive view. Most farmers live on the poverty line, making meager earnings. This far from civilization basic needs like education and medicine are woeful, and the land is a cruel mistress, which means most kids spent more time in the fields than the classroom. The dedication and resourcefulness of the hill tribes cannot be underestimated with how they have transformed this land of sheer cliffs into productive farmland.
With an early morning start from Meo Vac, it’s a comfortable ride to Cao Bang. By mid-morning the mist clears as the sun rises. The road winds its way through mountainous rural villages before spilling into the fairly flat Hoa An district. The roads are new, the tarmac is smooth, and the XR250 makes good time into Cao Bang.
It has been a fruitful few days in Meo Vac. With the weather cooperating, it has been fantastic. Luckily there’s still another ride – north of Cao Bang are more spectacular mountains and waterfalls, and more villages when time moves at a minuscule rate.
Mototreks 