March 28, 202
After a late night sleeper bus and 3 AM check in to the hostel, it is time for my Hai Giang loop journey to begin. This is an extreme motor bike loop through Northern Vietnam and considered one of the most beautiful yet dangerous drives. I opted to pay extra to have a professional driver so I could sit on the back of the bike and enjoy the views.
We started with debrief and getting to meet our easy riders. I was put in group 8, the last group, so we grabbed some bahn my, a vietnamese staple sandwich, before taking off. My easy rider is called young, he doesn't speak English but seems like a good dude. The weather is a bit muggy and misty today but we're gonna make the most of it. We all loaded up on our rain gear and took off. We were able to get some good views and went through a few nasty bits which made me glad I had a professional driving and not myself. We stopped for lunch and all desperately tried to warm up, especially those who didn’t have the best rain gear. We got to know the people in our group who over the next few days would become like family. After lunch, we drove to a nearby spot for a trek to a cave. We hiked to a cave which took approximately 100000 steps to get up to and we were absolutely knackered after. The cave was worth it though. Seeing all the incredible formations inside made us understand why we had such a treacherous hike up.
We had a bit more of a drive through the nasty weather before we eventually got back to our home stay. Half of the groups stayed at this one and we would get to know everyone else a bit better.
Because we were the last group to arrive we only had about 15 minutes to get settled before dinner. At dinner we had a huge family style meal, lots of local moonshine called happy water, and great chats. We played some drinking games, did some karaoke and danced around until 10. Then a chunk of us from our group wanted to keep having fun so we wandered into town to see if we could find something open. After a 30 minute adventure we gave up and decided to pass out to be ready to ride in the morning. While day one may have lacked in the views I was hoping for, I am excited to watch the rest of this adventure play out.
