Northern Loop Part 3 - Yen Minh to Dong Van

The Northern Loop is my blog series about a short motorbike trip in North Vietnam, starting and ending in Ha Giang.

Northern Loop Part 3 - Yen Minh to Dong Van

We woke up at Tom's Homestay and had a leisurely breakfast. @doctorcrypto and I talked with some of the other tourists and shared what route information we had. When it came time to leave, someone was loading their luggage onto my bike. They'd been at it for a while and had finally gotten their bag strapped in. At first, he didn't believe me when I told him that he had the wrong bike. After I asked him if the scooter's dashboard looked familiar, he realized his mistake. He unloaded my bike and apologized.

We got on the road and filled up with gas before leaving town. Pretty soon after leaving town, the road started going up into the mountains.

A view of Yen Minh (I think).

A random "side of the road" photo, early in the day's ride.

Time for a vlog break.

A few miles outside of town, we stopped for a vlog break. @doctorcrypto talked about our route and how things were going so far. The vlog is here, but I'll also embed it at the end of this post. Two little girls were in the house that we stopped in front of and they shyly approached us. Lucky for them, we had some candy to give them.

This is @doctorcrypto's photo. You can read his account of this day's ride here.

The house that we stopped in front of for a break.

Back on the road.

We got back on the bikes and didn't get very far before I stopped for some more photos. We ended up stopping for photos a lot on this day. The landscape was jaw-dropping.

There were lots of mountains and valleys on day 2's ride. The sun even came out!

Lovely roads to ride on.

Another photo stop. I still don't see how the locals are able to grow anything out here. To me, it looks like the whole place is made of stone.

A few farms next to the road.

If the highway to hell exists, then this must be the pathway to paradise.

@doctorcrypto and me.

Another beautiful valley.

A contemplative @doctorcrypto.

Another valley.

The land up here is very rocky, indeed.

A lot of cargo is hauled by people in this area. I can't imagine walking up these steep roads, let alone carrying a huge load.

Some farmland outside of Dong Van.

Dong Van.

Our arrival to Dong Van was pretty funny, in retrospect. It was embarrassing as hell when it happened, but it's not a real trip to a foreign country if you don't embarrass yourself at least once. We were trying to find a hotel that had been recommended to us. Google lied (again) and said the hotel was at the end of a street. Actually, the end of the street was a bustling market with tons of people trying to conduct business. My camera was recording when we accidentally tried to ride into the market, so I've included it in the vlog. I had a bad case of the embarrassment sweats by the time we got our bikes turned around.

The hotel was pretty close and we got a nice room. After we dropped off our stuff, we went out to explore. Here are some of the photos from Dong Van.

The very bright and busy market in Dong Van.

@doctorcrypto checking out the market.

A nice little garden in the middle of town.

One of those hotels in the background was ours. I think we stayed in the skinny one.

When we arrived, the market was already starting to close down. Here are some of the people leaving the market.

This concerned me at first. I was really careful to smell and taste test this because I've seen things like kerosene and cleaners sold in bottles that looked like water bottles. I've never heard of "Fully Automatic" water before, but this was indeed water.

Dong Van.

Another view of Dong Van.

The mountains make a cool backdrop for this town.

Me and @doctorcrypto.

A little coffee area with a big rock in the background.

I love the tall, skinny buildings in Vietnam. I haven't been anywhere else with a similar architectural style.

I was too slow with my camera to get the picture that I wanted. In the background is a girl that looked about 10 years old, walking her baby buffalo home.

The top of the market at the bottom of the image.

More tall, skinny buildings.

Inside one of the buildings at the market.

A rusted rail, next to the market in Dong Van.

The view from our room.

The day's ride was awesome, and Dong Van turned out to be great. The market was cool to see, and all of the people in their traditional clothes were so bright and visually interesting. Next to our hotel was an awesome restaurant that we ate at exclusively.

Northern Loop Day 2. Music by @beatseb and @fronttowardenemy.

Here's the vlog for the day's ride. The GoPro footage isn't that great. I mounted it to my left wrist to allow me to get better views than my helmet would. Unfortunately, it made it much more difficult to ride safely so I mostly have short little clips where I was able to take my had off the handlebars and focus on something. We also mention Cao Bang, but we weren't in Cao Bang, that would be on day 3.

The day's route.

That's it for this day's ride. Stay tuned for the next day's ride to Cao Bang. Until then, ride safe!