Ultimate DIY Ha Giang Loop Guide (No Easy Rider Tour) π»π³
Hello and welcome to Hajjong. We are doing the loop DIY done by ourselves. Come join us for a fun few days. Woo! Welcome to our DIY guide for the Harang Loop here in Vietnam. The majority of tourists on the loop nowadays take tours, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do it yourself. If you’re on a budget and don’t like tours, then this is the way around the loop for you. First things first, though, I have to mention the police checks. It’s inevitable that you’ll get stopped by the police on the Hang Loop. We got stopped three times when we went. To avoid receiving a hefty fine, which we read online is often around 2 million dong, you need to make sure you have the correct international driving permit for Vietnam or a bike license from Vietnam itself. For any fellow Brits, an international driving permit is dead easy to get back home and is surprisingly affordable. Right, enough about fines and more about this fine region of Vietnam. The Harong Loop DIY guide. Join us for the ride. All right. Hello and welcome to Hang Hang if you are from the north. Apparently, we’ve just checked into our hostel. We’re staying at Honggho hostel over there and we’ve sorted a double bed each. Yeah, the host is a joke. I’ll show you when we get back. Massive beds. Um, we’ve sorted out our bikes. Uh, bikes bike. We sorted out a bike. We’ve rented it. I’m passenger princess. That’s per usual. Tash is passenger princess. I did my fair share of driving. Uh we’ve rented it initially for 3 days. We’re going to extend it probably and do a 4 days, maybe even 5 days. Who knows? Per day is 300. Wait, how? Okay, so it’s 180 for the bike. We added an additional 100 insurance per day. Yeah, just because you never know. I don’t want to mess the bike up. You have to be paid 100k to be dropped outside of the city because occasionally the police will stop you from leaving the city’s premises uh if you don’t have a Vietnamese bike license or international bike license. So join us for a DIY hong loop. Excited? Yes. Yes. We’re going on an adventure. Woo. Let’s get loopy dash. Hello. Good morning from Hang. Yeah, here’s all the easy riders for the tour getting ready. That’s our bike there. We got to get the bike driven out of the city because sometimes the police refuse to uh let bikes out apparently. Apparently. But I think we’re going to get a taxi full of them and then we’re going to start driving hopefully in about 15 20 minutes. Fingers crossed. Chaos. Literally so chaotic. Let’s go, Ly. Okay, so I guess that we technically didn’t do the entire loop by ourselves, but give us a break. It’s only a couple of kilometers. All right, bye-bye. Thank you. Come on. All right, guys. We’re about to start the loop. So, if you go straight on, you do the loop clockwise. If you go right here, you do it anticlockwise. We’re going to do it antiques because that way we miss the tours, the majority of them. And also there’s a higher chance of missing the police as well. But I think we’re going to encounter them anyway and have to pay the fine. But we’ll see. I think we’re going to leave these guys here. I think they’re going clockwise. But I do have my phone. A few moments later. Out of the loop. Let’s get loopy. Loop number three. There are two ways to do the Hajjang loop, clockwise or anticlockwise. With our plan to evade running into most of the tour groups, we decided to head out and complete the journey in the anticlockwise direction. Along the way, there are plenty of stops to get refreshments, several activities and attractions to do, but the main thing which was most alluring to us was the views. Stopped on the road here at one of the high points on this side of the Ziloop. And all I can say is damn. And honestly, the less I speak, the more peaceful it is. So, I’m gonna stop speaking. Beautiful. Yeah. Dy’s bullying me. Oh, how is her How’s your helmet diagonal? I don’t know. No one know. Someone doesn’t know how to wear one. I don’t know how to talk really, so that’s fine. Someone did don’t do don’t know how to wear one. Back on road. You can see how wiggly wormy these roads are, which is exactly what you read and hear about. My foot is just on the brake pretty much 90% of the way on the way down that he’s doing a good job and we’re just taking our time. Lime corner could be anything. Look at this. Now I am safe. Give your warnings, guys. Give your warnings. Yeah. Use your horn. Use your horn liberally. Liberally said it liberally. Use your horn liberally. Things were going smooth, but little did we know that in a few windy roads time, we’ll be encountering the law for the first time. Okay, so police stop number one. We just got stopped by the traffic police. And what happened was I gave them my international driving license. I do have one, but only for cars, not for motorbikes. Uh they took it, they looked at it and then they took a photo of our number plate on our bike and told us to keep driving. So we didn’t get fine got anything yet. Not yet. So I think traffic number one. I think we passed. No. No. They were really nice though. [Music] Give me tarmac. My bloody hardest fever. That was that is [Β __Β ] [Applause] [Music] Oh, that was rough. My ass. Not all of the roads on the hard jung leap are smooth, but that’s all part of the experience. Another part of the experience was regularly seeing hordes of tour groups on the horizon. Their engines rumble like a distant beehive until all of a sudden your groups sometimes reaching 20 bikes fly past you. If you were feeling a little bit tired at all, these encounters were a great wakeup call. Quick little drinks, spoke. We’re having a quick little drink break because our ass is hurt and checking the map. This cafe looks lovely. Hell of a view. You might guess it’s Hongong. Hell of a view. We feel like a nice spot. I’m feeling loopy. I’m feeling loopy. Yeah. Are you guys feeling loopy yet? If you’re feeling loopy, comment, I’m feeling loopy. Just so I know. I read every comment. All freedom on average. Time to get back on road. Waterfall is coming next. That’s some views as well. Let’s get loopy. This is Tasha’s new saying. Is it? We’ve just parked our bikes here, gone down a cool little road, and we are going to Baden Waterfall, I think it’s called. We’ve gone at around 1:00 p.m. because we reckon all of the groups for the tours will be on lunch break, and so will everyone else having their lunch now. Perfect time to go. Weather’s gorgeous. have a dip and then we’ll have some food afterwards, I think. And I reckon we’re going to stay in this village tonight. So, yeah, absolutely zero rush. Lovely. Lovely. Wow, look at this. It’s so clear. The water looks amazing. Lovely. Also known as the Duja Waterfall, this place is named after the village it’s located in, Duja. Thankfully, we had arrived before the crowds and got to enjoy this little oasis the proper way. We’ve essentially got a place to ourselves. It’s us two and one other guy. A local guy. Lovely. How you feeling? Refreshed. Yeah. Lovely. Very refreshing. Especially Feels clean at the end there on the bike. It was quite hot. Yeah. Felt a bit sticky, especially in her jeans. Jeans is precautionary. So, yeah. There she goes. There she goes again. 3 2 1 [Music] There we are. Lovely little waterfall. Uh don’t expect to be mind blown by the look of it, the scale of it, but as a swimming spot, 10 out of 10. So relaxing and it’s very nice that it was quiet when we left. Thank you. Come on. All right, back to our bikes and we’ll find where we’re going to stay tonight. This guest house better be nice. It’s the right way. We don’t even know if it’s the right way. We think it’s the right way. Oh my god, look where we’re staying. Woo! To the right, I think. Wow. For the evening, we found a lovely little place called Today Duja Village to stay in. There’s plenty of places to stay along the Hajjang Loop. So, it’s up to you whether you want to party or to have a quiet night in. We opted for the latter tonight and enjoyed a decent dinner. All right, just been on my laptop for a little while. Tash going up to bed watching Netflix. It’s about half 9. We’re going to get up nice and early tomorrow. So, we will see you in the morning. Good night. All right. Good morning. Day two of the loop. It’s about 7:00 in the morning. Mountains are real misty, beautiful. We got our guy here at the hotel helping us strap our bags. What an absolute legend. Didn’t even ask him. He just came over and said, “I’ll do it for you.” Hero. While he does that, we got some pancakes. Banana, honey. Yummy. Yes, please. Tea. And a tea. Coffee. I’ll have a tea, please. Thank you. Hello. Out. Today the plan is to go all the way to Dong Van. Tasha is feeling a bit poorly today. Dodgy tummy. So dodgy tummy. We’ll see how far we actually get. But there’s a few two or three stops along the way which we want to do. Should be a fun day. Yeah. Let’s adventure. Let’s go loopy. Let’s get loopy. Let’s go loopy. This road is My tummy is loopy right now. Oopsie. We are leaving at around 10 7 this morning because we want to avoid the crowds. 10 7 At 7:30 7:30. We were meant to leave at 7, but our lovely accommodation had breakfast for us. It was lovely. And it’s included. So, uh, yeah, we want to avoid the crowds and get to these spots before the big tour groups. We can get it to ourselves like we got a waterfall yesterday. Lovely, lovely. Let’s see if it works. Leaving bright and early was one of the best decisions we made in a ha jangloo. The only things around in these morning hours were us locals and a whole lot of open road. All right, we’re stopping off at the top of the mountain because yesterday we saw this viewpoint with Vietnam flag and there were about 50 people here. I’m not even exaggerating. This morning, zero people. Well, two, none of us leave early in the morning. These are the benefits. Hey, is it recording? We are in Vietnam. Okay. [Music] Hey, little baby. Soft enough to get some snacks. We also made a little friend just purring. [Music] Dude, get on your side. Right. So, online we read that there are these lorries because there’s obviously a dam down there. Um, and it said be careful of them coming up. Didn’t expect to be like this. Good time for a mask. have one handy with you. We don’t. Down. Jesus. This isn’t the best road, guys. Are you all sick? Oh, absolutely. Under no circumstances can you do this on an automatic. We would have been down long ago. This is hectic. Danny’s doing such a good job. Ass. My ass is so sore. red ass over here. Great game. I’m pretty sure this is the worst road in Vietnam. If you’re doing this yourself, keep an eye out for loose rocks, drive slowly, and prepare to have a sore bum. Sorry for bothering you. Sorry for bothering you. Thanks, Vietnam. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Oh, yes. So, I cracked my tailbone when I was in high school being stupid sliding downstairs, and this has hurt that tailbone quite a bit. But we okay, we’ve arrived here at the boat terminal for two Canyon. We’re going to get a boat. 120,000 dong per person. I’m so glad to be off that road. That was horrible. I’m so tense. Yeah. 120,000 dong per person. They don’t accept cards, so make sure you have cash. Okay, we’re taking this buggy over to it. We are boat time, baby. Number 51 by the looks of it. Lucky number 51. You know what they say. Yeah. Been kicked off of two boats. I think they’re private ones. Yeah. Public boat. This is us at the grounds. Okay. [Music] Come on. Thank you. Lovely. Advertised as an hour or 90 minutes. Don’t think so. That’s a bit of a myth. We literally just went down around the side there for about 15 minutes and then dropped some people off there and came back here. Overall half an hour probably. Yeah, I’m not sure. Well, we got on at like 12. We got on at like 10 12 and it’s 12:53 now. I guess they also include the time spent at whatever that stop is. But it just looked like a restaurant cafe place for pickies. Really, really, really beautiful. Yeah, I was a little bit surprised when we turned around. I was kind of like, oh, yeah, it was very quick, but as Tash says, scenery, unbelievable. I think it’s worth it to be honest. Beautiful stuff. Back on the road. That’s the only way in and out. So, say a prayer for us, will you? [Music] I lost my head a little bit. Oh, flusters. Almost fell. This is a lot. Always remember, stay calm. Yeah. Don’t go too slow cuz you get the wobbles. Then you lose control. I went very tense. Don’t do that. Very tense. You get jerky. Got very tense. Went very slow and then let the rocks get to him. Oh well. is doing very well. And I think we’re about halfway up now. No, we’re over halfway. I can see the construction. Woo! All right. Wow. That is probably the worst road in Vietnam. That was one of the most difficult driving experiences I’ve ever had. The way down is harder, but on the way up it’s easier. But it’s also easier to hit a loose rock and then just lose all momentum. So yeah, just don’t go too slow. Anyway, we made it. Woo! Onwards. By the time you watch this, I hope that this road has been built. I really do. If not, and you’re scared of driving it, well, at least you can enjoy the valley from a viewpoint above. Just had to stop, didn’t we? This landscape is absolutely insane. The viewpoint up here, the visitor center, and yes. Wow. Jeez, that’s crazy. So, there’s the canyon and we’re just driving up and around it. I don’t know how you can even capture this landscape on camera. I’m sure it looks amazing, but in person it is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Now I know why so many people have told us do the hung loop. I get it. Okay. Which color? Blue, white, or which one you like? Which one? You like blue? Yeah. It’s good. Blue is good. Okay, I’ll get one. One blue. How much is it? Uh, how much? 20. 20. And can I have a corn? Corn? Yes, please. Corn. How much for the corn? 10,000. 10,000. Oh, well cheap. I got some peanuts. I’ll try it myself first. Just sticky rice. Tastes good cuz the barbecue’s just had all the stuff on it before. Feels good. 10,000 for that. I can’t believe it. Bargain. Following our roadside snack, we pressed onwards towards the town of Dong Van. As per usual, we were treated to the stunning scenery around us until we finally reached civilization again. In Dongvan, we checked into one of the many hotels and I headed out whilst Tash rested. The old town here has some pretty cool looking buildings which reflect both the traditional roots of the town as well as the French colonial period in Vietnam. The town also has a bustling market which was drawing to a close for the day. There’s still just enough time though to nip in and try some local snacks. This region is home to the Hong people I believe. So, lots of the women dressed like this looking awesome. A lot of the produce and meats and things here will be brought from the local villages. We’ve seen lots of the locals walking along the roads today. So, I assume they’re just walking along the roads, reaching a big town where they can sell their stuff. Let’s have a gander. I’ve never seen honeycomb like this. Wow. Negotiating. Seen a few of these like dough ball kind of things. Maybe I’ll try one. All right. I gave her 100 and she gave me like 80 back. So, I think that’s a fair price. Let’s give these a go. I have no idea what they are. This is like a star thing. Oh, that’s rice. It’s a rice cake in the shape of a star. Pretty good. Snacks weren’t enough to fully fill my belly. So, I went back to get Tash and we went out for a delicious dinner. Another day, another dollar. Probably the best food we’re going to find on the loop. I’ll be honest. It’s amazing. Look at your little face. The eyes are so droopy. This is another reason to visit this restaurant. Apparently, I’ve read the Google reviews. He hangs out here and so does a cat. Yet to see the cat. No, we saw the cat. It’s the white one. Oh, we saw the cat, but it was roaming the streets. It’s not here right now. Here they are together. Doggy cutie. She’s got a rock. He’s going for it. Oh, walking around the markets of the old center. So destroyed. I’m so tired. I don’t know how Dunny’s not. I I’ve had a nap, too. You know what they say. Well, it’s a it’s a tough life being passenger princess. And with that, I had a horrible bid you good night last night, too. I know. And you have a She’s got a work meeting in like an hour, don’t you? I have a meeting in an hour. Fine. I reckon we say good night now, don’t you? Prick. Bye. Bye. Loop. Day three. Join. Are you loopy yet? Yes, I’m feeling very lofy. Sorry to interrupt that really good song. That was just the first verse as well. She waited for us. Very lofy today. First stop ATM. Get some cash out. Second stop, China border, baby. These guys right here, traffic police. These are who you’ll be paying. Careful of them. Early bird gets the worm and early bikers get the roads to themselves. That’s not a saying, but it should be as once again we got to enjoy the views with very few other people around on the roads. Tash is driving the loop now. Just let her turn around, get a feel for the bike. I want to drive. Tash really wants to drive, but I’ve got the international driver permit. I don’t. Sorry, mate. I have to do it so I don’t get fined. So annoying. Did you enjoy your little turn around though? Yeah, I went off roadie. You’re crazy. [Music] All right, just bought a little ticket viewpoint. Uh 40k per person. Flag pole looks mad. Let’s go to the top and look at North Vietnam and also China. China. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Lots of stairs. Stairs. Stairs. Stairs. All right, made it to the top. The flag pole. It’s a big boy. Absolutely massive. Very cool. Very cool. Bit cloudy on this side, too. But it’s a lovely view. I’m sure if the clouds up there be rolling hills way in the distance. Google Maps lie to us. In fact, this is the road that goes north into China. So, yeah, China’s in the clouds right now. Yeah. And that that road there is the one that goes straight to the border. Yeah, it’s orientated one. China Vietnam. Stunning. Enjoyed the view from the bottom. And now let’s go upstairs. Oo. Yeah, baby. Oh, wow. Excuse me. Flag. Oh my god. tiring. All right, let’s go. So, we are we’re just on the road that goes to the border. I want to go right there. Check it out while just to see what’s going on. You know, maybe we can find some Chinese food. Turns out that we couldn’t get all the way up to the border, but we still enjoyed ourselves knowing that China, where we used to live and where we’d be heading back to visit in a few weeks time, was right there. The day was still early, so we chugged on and continued smashing out the kilome. It didn’t take long to realize that this would be our last day of the loop. Before it ended, though, we have plenty more views to enjoy, winding roads to experience, as well as local lunches. This place really does make you feel high on life. Woohoo. Woo! When I feel heavy metal. [Music] We’ve driven through a few valleys, but this one might be top. Yeah, because it’s got this river. You’ll see in a sec. There’s the river. Amazing big mountains down the valley. I don’t know what’s happened. Just driving along. I felt a bug, a wasp, maybe a fly, something that stings. I don’t know. Flew here. It got trapped to my helmet and my face here. And then I got a sharp pain. I swiped it away and now it’s going red. So, I might have been stung by a wasp. Also, look at this. the mob. So many. I reckon we seen about 200 people today. These companies must be making so much money. Go for it. If you want to do a tour, go for it. But he’s easy riders. I tell you what, we almost just got hit by one cuz he’s trying to overtake a bus on a bench and we had to Well, we flinched off. So stupid. This is about genuinely the fifth or sixth time in the last three days where I’ve had to press the brakes like slammer to avoid us going into an easy ride cuz they want to be fun for the fire. I don’t really think that the hard loop itself has been too dangerous, but the easy riders driving like [Β __Β ] has definitely made it somewhat scarier. You need to be out there ready to break. Beep and go slowly. Your trucks are nice. They stay on their side normally. They can’t help it. They overlap. On reflection, one thing that we should have done more of was experience the culture of the local area. On tours, you’ll be taken to weaving villages and experience village traditions. When we got to the weaving village ourselves, it didn’t look like anything was open or there was much to do, so we hit the road instead. I’d highly recommend doing your own research on what you want to do beforehand. And if we were to visit Har Jung again, we’d structure our route around authentic experiences just like this. So we went down to Nam Dam weaving village. Nothing really jumped out to us there though. So we continued along this cool little road. And now we’re at a cool viewpoint as well. I think for the village, sorry. I think for the village, um, it’s it would be a cool idea to stay stop and stay in one of the guest houses and maybe you could pay for some kind of cultural experience. Yeah. But we didn’t want to stay at night. So, cuz there wasn’t anything obvious going on. No, there were about we saw signs for like 10 home stays and on the map there’s even more. So, I’m sure if you’re part of a tour and you stop there, you can have a wonderful local experience. And the herbal spars, this area has like these herbal spars that you can try. Which I’m keen to do somewhere. Very luxurious. For now though, we just enjoyed the view. Pink lemonade. All the landscapes are so big that when you go through a valley, it’s like extra amazing. So you get some perspective. We’re on the home straight now. About 20 km from the city. So no 4 days for us, just a three day, we reckon. Yeah. You start early in the morning then. Yeah. Yeah. We have to take it very slow. We could have taken it slower and maybe like Well, I don’t know. Most most of it would have been just stopping at viewpoints essentially, but we could have spent a night somewhere. Decided not to. Yeah, there we are. And we have arrived back at Honggha Hostel. One piece. Thank you. All good. Fantastic. Sorry. Heavy. Come on, my friend. Ni. Yeah, I have I can you go. Yeah, we have Cokes. In the end, we finished the loop in 3 days instead of the four we originally planned. Um, we’re going to get on the bus now to Hanoi and we’ll talk to you tomorrow about it more in detail when we collect our thoughts a bit more. There we are. Hang. Bye-bye. Let’s load our stuff onto the bus. Another day, another bus. See you in Hanoi. Okay, it’s the next day. We’ve arrived in Hanoi and I just want to talk about our overall Hangu experience. So, doing it by ourselves, in total, we spent three left. Doing it by ourselves, we spent a total of $3 million, so a million and a half each. Didn’t get the police fine, so that saved us a lot of money. And overall, I think 3 days is enough if you set up early morning. What do you think? Probably. Yeah, especially cuz we did anti prize. Like I feel like the first two days were the most amazing views I guess. Yeah. The main highlight of the entire loop is the road itself for me. The stops. So we went to the waterfall. That was all right. That was fine. That was good. But nothing mind-blowing. Refreshing. One of the major things we missed was the skywalk that a lot of people do which is just after the valley with the boat. Canyon itself was great. Beautiful. Just wish the boat ride was a bit longer cuz we literally just went around for 10 minutes and came back. It felt a bit silly cuz like we just sort of like went down the water like along the water and then just turned around in a really random location. It was like we were all just there for the pictures. Yeah. But still worth it I think cuz the valley itself is gorgeous. Overall comparing doing it in a tour and by ourselves, obviously we’ve only got the experience of doing it by ourselves. I’d say just research and see what you want. If you want to be partying, drinking, being with big groups of people, tours the one for you. And if you got the budget. Yeah. And if you got the budget, but if you want a bit more freedom on the road, stop where you want, sleep where you want, then do it by yourself. And also, you save a lot of money. Yeah. So, yeah, overall loop, I had a wonderful time. It was lovely. Very, very beautiful. We enjoyed it very motorbike loop. We do indeed. I will say like don’t do it on an automatic though. No, no, no. I will I will say though probably the nicest times was when we were completely alone on the roads. Yeah, cuz those packs of tourist tours are just massive. We are not exaggerating by the way when I when we say the most dangerous parts on the road were the overconfident easy riders overtaking on bends and just taking up the entire layer. Yesterday, yesterday in the last hour of us doing it, we had the biggest close call and it was an easy rider overtaking on a corner. Overtaking a bus, overtaking a bus or a van on a corner. Came out onto our side and we almost went into them, but Danny beeped and broke quickly. I have to veer to the right and they quickly went back into their freaking lane. But I think I would be so stressed if I was in the back of one of them. I think I would too because they were flying to be honest. So, this goes to the final question. Should you do the Hang Loop by yourself? What do you think? I think it’s absolutely doable. Nowhere near as scary as everyone made it out to be. No. If you’re on a budget, that’s the way to do it. But if this is your first time driving in Asia, I don’t think I’d recommend that to start. No. No. So, there you go. Three-day hong loop. Three-day hong loop loop. No, three-day, two night hong loop. We had a great time. I hope you enjoyed watching. See you in the next one. Bye bye.
Wanting to do the Ha Giang Loop by yourself? Tour groups are all the rage but you donβt need an easy rider to ride easy. In this video, we will cover all you need to know to be able to do the Ha Giang Loop without a guide.
If you donβt have much or any experience riding a motorbike, unfortunately I think this will be too much of a challenge for you. There are plenty of hostels in Ha Giang town itself though, so itβs not too difficult to find someone to tag along with! If all else fails then taking a tour will still be one of the best experiences you can have travelling! We arenβt anti-tour groups, we just like doing stuff on our own terms π
One other benefit I will mention is that doing the loop by yourself is a great way to do the Ha Giang Loop on a budget. Rent a bike, bring your international driving permit and be on your way. Itβs that simple.
As always, we’re backpacking, we’re on a budget, but we’re trying to do as much as possible. Be part of the journey by hitting subscribe and let’s get loopy in Ha Giang!
Follow the journey from Singapore to Sapporo on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3IgS21c
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One of the best experiences in my life. If you are visiting Vietnam, donβt hesitate to try Ha Giang Loop.