Wednesday 26 February 2025
I awoke at 6am and took a photo of the beautiful valley scene. Dexter awoke soon after. His view was completely obscured by fog. Had Laszlo Toth smeared a white paste across a master’s canvas?
(Sidenote: the walls of this accommodation had the wifi password painted in big block letters on many parts. In Vietnam, thus far there had not been word passwords but numbers. For example:
123456789 or 68686868. It went to my own belief. Customers of Air BnBs want wifi more than they want cleanliness or toilet paper supplies. It has become the must-have of the age).
We climbed the small rise to the main pavilion and asked for breakfast. It looked like noodles from a packet served with vegetables and eggs. It was a nice meal to enjoy at the time.
Guang had woken and wandered down from his room above the lobby. He went to the refrigerator and brought Dexter a Coca-Cola. He pointed at it. My son opened it for him but neither had calculated the shaking which had occurred between fridge and table. Dexter opened it quickly and Guang was staring straight down the barrel. The kickback almost blew the kid’s head off.
No other adults were in sight and the little boy sat next to Dexter and began to sip away happily. It was about 7.30am and Dexter commented that he probably wasn’t allowed Coke, had never had one, and would be pinging off the walls at any moment.
As if he spoke English and wanted to show off, Guang began twitching and rocking his head from side-to-side. The sugar high hadn’t taken long. He was pinging. Dexter lost it. The little kid left his chair and began dancing about. Oh those bad Western influences.
A black cat wandered into the picture and settled straight onto Dexter’s lap. He asked Guang the Vietnamese word for cat. No reply so he went for the phone translation. “Meo?” Guang nodded, then got up and motioned for us to stay where we were. He disappeared into a room near the lobby and returned with a plastic toy about as big as a thumbnail. Black cat.
Having done our damage to the idyllic family, we shouted our goodbyes to those in the kitchen and returned to pack for day three. Dexter had become obsessed with a notion that small garden plots at these establishments were for growing their own poppies for opium. How else to make money from these accomodation businesses? Next to our cabin was a small garden.
“That’s the owners’ poppy field,” he said. It looked like baby’s breath, a ubiquitous flower in Australian floral arrangements.
We hit the road, returning along much of the entry into where we stayed, before branching off to return to Ha Giang. Dexter had his sights on a cafe he had seen on the way in. The name captured me immediately: LaLaLand.
Uphill we stopped at what we thought was it. Wrong. However, it didn’t stop me having an ice cream cone. While being filmed, I showed my disdain for custom. “Clock this? 8.30am,” I informed unknown future watchers that health considerations were not a factor. Two minutes further on we found LaLaLand. What a revelation.
Two egg coffees ordered and I sat on a raised platform overlooking a stunning valley. The coffee came as two clear glasses, each with what looked like a small teapot balanced on their tops. The contents of this dripped gently into the condensed milk whipped with espresso mixed into the glasses. Our instructions were to leave it for two minutes.
By the time the coffee was ready it was lukewarm but delicious. The best I had enjoyed since arriving in Vietnam. Adding to the glamour, cloud had begun to circle the establishment. My hand reached into misty air where only the coffee glass and drip pot were visible. This was all so good we ordered another two and then ventured into their shop.
Straight away Dexter came to me with a pair of hemp board shorts, almost the length Bunchy wore in Ray Donovan. The material was wild but black and white stripes at the back leant it enough conservatism to get by. “I think you would be able to pull this off?” he said. A big white t-shirt and these with brown loafers, walking down Napoleon Street? I could see that.
The other ones he had chosen were even more distinctive. “I’ll be wearing these only around the house so you can have the good ones.”
While this was going on, he also spied a wooden smoking pipe about the size of a telescope while I showed him a very cheap gold-looking ring that I could use for my upcoming marriage.
He was adamant that the cheap ring wouldn’t do. “You’re getting a proper wedding band made in Hoi An.” I returned with “I’ve never worn a wedding ring in my other marriages. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on something I won’t wear.” “And how’s that gone for you?” His reply earned a snort but I knew he was right.
We eschewed the ring, bought the shorts and a trinket purse for my granddaughter, Sage. Drank our coffee and Dexter doubled back into the shop to buy the pipe. Bringing wood back into Australia was a no-no but he reasoned that if he put it in my case, he could smuggle it in. The pipe had its own leather case and the shop owner gave him a small bag of tobacco for the bong, a lighter and two key rings for me in appreciation.
The land on our route became even more spectacular. When filmed from high up, arable ground was aplenty on the flats, with paths for workers clearly defined amid rich earth awaiting crops. Small, neat farm houses were at the edge of these. We were up high but even higher amid forest was a slightly grander house, spectacular in its seclusion. There was no evidence of how the occupants reached it.
Views often also had water. Rivers and streams ran through the valleys, further fed by run off from the high peaks. It all compensated for the sore neck exacerbated by the bumps in the road.
We took a remote shortcut – as recommended by our original landlord at QT – through the valley floor, passing villagers and families and field workers going about their tasks.
At one point we stopped for a map check and a woman on a scooter was coming the opposite way toting bamboo on her back. There was enough being carried to fill a council rubbish truck at home. Soon after she turned into a dwelling, where she had to negotiate a shut gate to enter the premises. All this happened in one movement and I applauded. She paused and waved at the appreciation. Small things, great benefits.
We stopped further to view waterfalls down the mountains, cascading just inside where the road joined the foliage, then further down the hillside. There were women with sickles working in fields. We were climbing again and stopped for fuel at a house where a lever operated pump measured the amount of litres required. While this was happening I walked back to another residence where at least 17 chickens were stuffed into a cage about the size of a carry-on board suitcase. I took a photo and sent it to Annie, a big fan of only buying free range eggs. “The poor chickens,” she replied.
Stopped at a spot called Little Ma Pi Leng and took a quick photo at the top before lunch. It was a brick platform supporting an iron frame and gave a spectacular raised view of the scenery below. Two tourists and their rider were making a meal of their occupation and I began to get tetchy. Impatience isn’t one of my redeeming features and I received another telling off from my rider. Dexter and I each negotiated the treacherous stairs to the lookout, had our fill of view and mounted up for the next stop, a mediocre bahn mi eaten in front of another cracking view. We kept riding and, this day being our shortest distance of the trip, soon entered the outskirts of Ha Giang.
The town was huge, having hidden its size when we had previously exited from its other side.
Leaving early morning from the guest house on the town’s outskirts, we had missed the built-up area. This was a major centre and the main street was long. We were unsure where the other side of town was. When we came to a major roundabout and statue, the map was again checked and QT turned out to be close.
Into a similar room, we regathered our stored luggage before freshening up and attacking the town. Dexter wanted a haircut and a massage. I wanted a shave.
The first turned out a disaster. Dexter’s hair was closely cropped and dyed blond for his visit to Japan. Two weeks beyond that, it was growing out and he wanted rid of the extra bits of blond on the side. Apples don’t fall far from the tree in my family and I was pleased to see that vanity was riddled through this child.
Dexter’s hairdresser was a young groover with yellow hair and heavily-shaved sides. He could possibly cut but his understanding of the attempted translation was negligible. He shaved both sides very close to bald, left a huge speed bump shape in the back of his customer’s head and the sides were unevenly balanced. Needless to say there was disappointment in the chair and language problems precluded it being fixed with deft precision.
Between profane words, my son declared he wanted the guy to shave him completely bald. I retorted – amid stifled giggling – that this was too drastic. My shave on the other hand was fine.
We left for dinner.
This was upstairs in an arcade with elevator to a rooftop restaurant where our chosen seat proved too cool considering our clothing. We retreated to the interior and ordered. It was a western-food place, probably to assuage the whims of Ha Giang’s many youthful international motorcycle tourists? “It’s a ‘combo’,” said Dexter. Pizza, burger and Caesar Salad. One size fits all. We sensed it would be ordinary but time was short.
A middle-aged caucasian man was fussing about the restaurant and we thought he was a customer looking for salt or a serviette. Then he walked into the kitchen and Dexter thought this beyond the pale. It turned out he was the unlikely maitre d’ and when we called him over to ask him some questions, his South African accent was strong. I inquired if he owned the place but he firmly told me that Vietnam is a communist country and no westerner can own a business here. He continued his duties, trying hard but sort of being more annoying than effective. I mused that this Afrikaner had come to Ha Giang to ride the bikes, lost his fare home in a card game and was forced to manage a restaurant to recover. Fanciful I know but I’m a bit like that.
We paid and left but Dexter remembered our room didn’t have soap. We stopped to buy this and face masks for our next plane ride. I also bought a packet of biscuits called Cappuccino Cookies. This was a holiday treat as Annie would have made me read the packet and denied purchase due to the number of additives and their letter-number symbols included in the bake. I have christened these L21s, meaningless but my code for the myriad of chemical shite that gets put into processed foods.The face masks were either too expensive or unsuitable.
This shop stop proved fortuitous. I had left my mobile phone at the dinner table and our waitress had come down the lift and was running through the arcade trying to catch us up.
I was smiling at the luck, Dexter was still angry about his skull. We went back to the guest house and showered and packed ready for our next bus adventure. My tour guide had booked two buses – one going to Ha Long Bay and then added another going to Cat Ba. Originally he had thought the two destinations were side-by-side but, like lagos Como and Maggiore, while looking fairly close on a map, their locations are quite distant from each other.
He hadn’t cancelled the Ha Long Bay bus. It was 7.25pm and, while comfortably packing and aiming for a 7.45pm departure, confirmed by frequent phone calls from the tour operator, another call came in, this time from a woman. “Where are you? The bus is downstairs waiting for you.”
We rushed the end of our packing, hurried down in the lift and found a man loudly shouting “Ha Long Bay” probably just for our benefit. Dexter told this guy that we were going to Cat Ba but the phone rang again and the woman insisted this was our bus. All this because Dexter hadn’t the manners to cancel his previous bus booking. As this could be our only option, he took it.
Laying down at the rear, top level – exactly the same bunk position as our first horror trip – we prepared for another sleepless night. While prone, Dexter checked the information and realised the error. We were on the original booking and our second booking was still to pull up. But the bus was moving. My son yelled “Wrong bus, grab your shit and let’s get off!”. The bus was on a major street by now but fortunately needed to u-turn to go down the one-way road back towards its destination. Dexter explained the situation to the woman he had reconnected on the phone and she told the bus driver to stop. Profuse apologies all around but we alighted. A bus full of annoyed backpackers, curtains now drawn, watched the commotion. Our luggage retrieved from the hold, we looked to see where we were.
Our good luck returned. QT was a fairly tall building and its sign was clearly visible about 300m down the road. We hurried to our correct bus, crew waiting patiently outside. It was just on 7.45pm. Luggage stowed, put into our bunks and the pressure eased. Dexter was overheated from running and stress but marvelled at my lack of panic in the situation. Why panic? It was his tour, I was just the bloke enjoying it.
The beds on this bus were much smaller and Dexter’s knees were bent. His arms needed to rest on the barriers which stopped sleepers rolling out of bed. We mused that, though slightly uncomfortable, this tightness of body may assist sleep as there would be less room for uncontrolled movement?
While Dexter filled Liv in on the dramas of the Ha Giang exit route, I tucked into a couple of Cappuccino Cookies and read my book. The bus being more pastorally run, we stopped at a reasonable time for a comfort break; Dexter bought a neck pillow and suggested I copy.
I demurred. Despite my soreness, I reasoned carrying this monstrous-looking bogan accessory through the rest of the trip more onerous than necessary. We were asleep at about 10pm and, though broken, was comfortable enough to be declared a good night’s rest.
PART V ENDS
I WRIGHT 