The Ha Giang loop, part I
Reflections from Vietnam’s most beautiful (and ethically complex) road trip.
Riding Vietnam’s Ha Giang loop with a young H’mong driver, I found not only staggering landscapes but unexpected connection—and questions about culture, class, and what freedom really feels like.
It's 7 pm in Hanoi
and I'm sitting in a small rented studio flat watching the motorbikes pass by underneath the window. I've just gotten back from riding – or being a passenger princess – on the Ha Giang loop. My body is sore from four days on a bike, but I’m easily the happiest I’ve ever been.
For those not in the know, the Ha Giang loop is a motorcycle circuit that spans over 200 km around the north of Vietnam. You can either drive it yourself, or you can go with an “easy rider,” someone who drives for you while you sit on the back admiring the views.
At just one hostel, over 100 backpackers begin this loop each day, and tours can last anywhere between 3 to 7 days. So there are many drivers, mostly young men under the age of 30, who undertake the dangerous journey regularly. Most of them are paid well for the work, by Vietnamese standards. They ride and service their own bikes, and only get one day off a month. If they have any accidents on the trip, they're not allowed to be a driver anymore. They share their meals during the day, and bunks in the home stays at night.
There's a lot to be said around the cultural bubble of the Ha Giang loop tours. As a tourist, it's courtesy to buy your driver coffees and drinks, sometimes beers, have dinner together, and generally form a bond (given you're on the back of their motorcycle in close proximity, it's fairly inevitable). The drivers are also known to be particularly gentlemanly with women, helping them to take their helmets on and off, offering a hand on and off the bike, helping them to put on ponchos when the weather turns. It's not uncommon for girls to get with their riders—I saw this happen a couple of times.
On some of the tours there is a large drinking culture, which includes the drivers having shots of “happy water,” or home-brewed rice wine. Some drivers seem to genuinely enjoy joining in. Others may feel pressured — knowing the drinking plays into the tips and camaraderie expected of them.
I have very mixed feelings about this. Imagine being a young man in a patriarchal culture, with access to alcohol someone else is paying for, a woman’s attention, a motorbike, a well paying job, and the open road. At the same time, there is also potentially the pressure of drinking, of riding a motorbike through some difficult terrain, of being extra courteous, thinking of the tip. Every rider, every trip, every background is different — and that’s exactly why the dynamic is so complex.
As the host called out my name,
I walked over to the driver I had been paired with. His name was No, but his nickname was Nurik. He was 21 years old and had been riding a bike since he was 14. A member of the H’mong, an ethnic minority tribe in Vietnam, he had been raised in the mountains and was used to hard work.
We spoke via Google translate throughout the four days. I asked questions – did he have enough rest between tours? Was he paid fairly? What did he want to be when he was younger, what did he want to do after being an easy rider?
Nurik seemed fairly cheerful about being a driver, and didn't share any complaints about the money or the work. He told me that in his family, they didn't need a lot of money, but that the most important thing was that members were healthy and happy. He may have been diplomatic, conscious of reputation and tips — or perhaps he was genuinely content.
And maybe he was telling the truth. I had to check my instinct to assume unhappiness just because his life looked different from mine. I want to be so careful of my own pre-conceived judgment, of imagining that just because someone is from a set of circumstances that are not my own, that they are “worse-off.” There are many ways to live a fulfilling life. And if I don't know the ins and outs of what that looks like, and someone tells me that they are happy, who am I to think that they must be lying?
At the same time, the economic context, our own blurred context of paid professional and ‘new friend,’ and the language barrier of Google translate made it hard to accept this at face value. There were other riders who openly shared that they found the work hard, and whose parents worried about them on the road. I imagine he was trying to make peace and find contentment in his situation, balancing the pressure of financial responsibility with the joy that comes from being on the road. And I know my bias is real - I wanted him to be content, both because he is a person, but also for my own contentment on this trip. I wanted to soothe the discomfort of the situation for my own sake. It’s just not possible for me to know, through four days on a bike with someone, the ins and outs of their world.
There are also real implications of the burgeoning tourist trade on the local inhabitants. Before we began our journey, we were warned not to give the tribal children we saw any money. This was because they might skip or be taken out of school in favour of helping tourists up the mountain paths, selling flowers, or braiding hair for the income. This is because despite Vietnam's economic growth, most ethnic minority groups like the H’mong still live under the poverty line. We saw very elderly people carrying baskets of harvested crops on their backs.
The tourist trade is somewhat helpful as an alternative source of income to the current means of subsistence farming, particularly if the H’mong are the ones who can share their own culture and history. Given the remoteness of some of the tribal villages and the poor conditions of the roads, it's possible that the influx of tourists and cash on the loop will help lead to improvements.
There is a risk of having to sell your culture
in order to survive. When I was in Malaysia, I saw an exhibition called Kenyalang Circus, by Marcos Kueh. It contained huge, fluorescent woven posters and billboards that contained exoticised imagery of manual labourers paraded as entertainment. In the artist’s own words, the work is “an attempt to understand what it means to be from Borneo in the eyes of the Malaysians who live in the western peninsula… the job is to figure ourselves out, on what belongs to our truth and what isn’t, so that we know how we want to present ourselves when the world asks.”
As part of the series, Kueh also questioned the intention of the people of Borneo – when they put themselves in traditional costumes and worked in the industry of hospitality, performing their harvest rituals, did they still do it for the Gods, or for the eyes of tourists? Can you cosplay your own culture, can you sell it?
It’s crucial that the H’mong are able to protect their traditions and history in the face of growing tourism. As we reached the Chinese border, Nurik handed me a book and said, “this is for you.” The book was about the H’mong Vuong family, one of the most powerful families in Dong Van, Ha Giang, where Nurik was from. He wanted me to understand some of the history of his home town, and his people.
As for himself,
Nurik shared that he had grown up working in the fields and was used to manual labour. When we drove, he often admired the views, and though I could see he was certainly tired, he also looked like he was enjoying himself. He often pointed out little things—a rainbow formed in the sunlight sparkling off a waterfall, a particular view of the rice terraces. He had been in the army for a while, as was his desire when he was a child, but left after an injury, and had been driving the loop for the past six months. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do next. He liked cooking, his specialty was stir-fried beef with garlic and onions, so perhaps all he needed for his next step was a pot.
He told me that he guessed that I was a writer by my glasses and the notebook he saw poking out of my bag. I think he’d been speaking to the other drivers about me, because the next day, one of the other drivers came over and told me via Google translate that Nurik would write me a poem. Delighted, I asked if he was also a writer, but he said that he was actually a rapper.
As the rider with the medical bag, we always rode at the back of the pack. That afternoon, he pulled even further back from the others so that we were alone on the road, the hum of their bikes fading into the distance. He switched on a little speaker, which swung on a carabiner attached to his keys.
Turning the volume up, he asked, ‘are you ready?’ In excitement, I nodded, and he began to rap. At first, his voice was swallowed up by the wind, and I leaned forward, so we were almost cheek to cheek. He began to raise his voice, flow steady as we wound up mountain roads, through pine forests.
In that moment, he was a professional driver, a financial provider, a tour guide - and also just a boy. A boy rapping into the rushing air, a boy performing for the trees, who had an audience in the girl on the back of his bike. He took the curves of the road with ease as he continued, a verse in H’mong smoothly followed by another in Vietnamese.
I’ll admit that I was both in awe of and perplexed by the performance. I wasn’t sure what he was doing in that moment - whether his rap was a gift for me, a sharing between us, or something all his own. Whatever it was, it felt like a shy freedom—brief, but true.