Buying a Random Phone/ My Friend
Losing contact with my family was how this tumultuous journey began. Staring at the black screen of my phone, I went searching for someone to help me. I needed my phone for the Ha Giang Loop so my mom would not freak. She would probably think I had been kidnapped or murdered. In the northern city of Hanoi, hundreds of motorbikes come racing down the street. Dodging them narrowly, I make my way through some alleys that are lively with laughs coming from locals playing games on the sidewalks and eating steaming bowls of pho.
Two young boys sharing a motorbike, cut a corner too fast, and both fly through the air rolling over the asphalt, neither with helmets on. Staring at them stunned, I notice there are no chunks of brain on the road, just some boys with bloody knees and elbows. The boys looking at each other start laughing, pick the bike up, and go on their merry way. Praying for their safety, a harsh flashback resurfaces of a childhood friend that passed away a couple years prior.
His name was Daniel. Since my parents were divorced, I would visit my dad who lived in a trailer next to my widowed grandma and my rambunctious first cousins. Daniel lived down the street from us, and he was the one to teach me how to ride a dirt bike. Out of my dad’s sight, we would go up a gravel hill that contained mountains that we forged trails through. When it would rain, there was a muddy slope that gave me perfect practice. Daniel would urge me to race up that slippery slope, which would make me start sliding, flip the bike over on its side, and go rolling down the hill. But being determined, I would pick it up, and try again until I reached the summit. How sweet victory tasted when I made it and noticed Daniel clapping his hands and grinning.
Daniel turned eighteen and two months later he was taken out of this world. Riding his bike, around a curve, like we had done thousands of times before, his chain popped off which in turn locked his wheel. He fell into the creek and passed away.
It frightens me how fragile our lives are, but that’s why I decided to do the motorbike loop. Life is too short to be scared and have regrets.
Pushing the tragic thought out of my head, I walk past a shaggy haired man grinning at me. A sign on his outside stand catches my eye. It has a picture of a phone. My face lights up and using Google Translate on his phone we try communicating with one another. ” Can you fix my phone?” Looking at me with an eyebrow raised, he types ” I want to show you how to raise a family.” The door is open behind him revealing a petite lady, washing dishes, which I assume is his wife. After an hour of shoddy communication, we come to an agreement. He sells me an outdated android for $90 and his wife hands me a helmet and pats the seat behind her on their small motorbike. I hop on and we zoom through the street.
We avoid crashing into others, and the first ATM we stop at refuses my card. The next works, and I quickly withdraw the cash and hand them my money. Stopping at a food vendor on the way to my hostel, I point at what the lady across from me is eating. The lady at the stand runs into an apartment building behind her and brings me back a hot bowl full of clear broth with noodles and fish. She hands me a plate full of fresh green vegetation and chili peppers that I carefully place inside my soup.
Night falls, and a man walks me and four others to a bus station where the driver hands us slippers to put on in place of our outside shoes. The bus contains three rows of seats, with top and bottom bunks. There is a thin blanket rolled up and I slide into a bottom seat on the righthand side and place the blanket over me. I shut my eyes to try and get some sleep, for the journey ahead, but the driver plays loud obnoxious TikTok videos with laugh tracks over each one. I feel like I am watching an old sitcom where the sounds are placed over the punchlines. We wait for an hour and then he turns off the phone and starts driving.
Throughout the city, he incessantly blows the horn, which I come later to understand is a must while driving here. Finally falling asleep, we arrive 6 hours later to the town of Ha Giang. It’s around 4 in the morning and eyes puffy I enter the small hostel. They show me the elevator and I share a room with two other girls. One of the girls walks down to reception to complain, but the man at the front desk rolls his eyes and tells her she is lucky since some are sharing a room with 20 others and sleeping on the floor.
Day One:
Waking up at eight, I order some pancakes on the house, but have a hard time swallowing them down. My stomach does flips. Today is the start of the Ha Giang Loop and I have chosen to drive my own motorbike through the mountainous passes and steep curves with no guard rails. A cute short haired young lady with rectangular glasses hands me the keys to a bike. ” Here is the shifter, and here are the brakes. Practice a few loops around.” I swallow hard and once on I realize a semi-automatic is a lot easier than a manual shift dirt bike.
We are sorted into two groups and I meet the rest of my gang. The only other foreigners that are driving bike alongside me is 4 shirtless sculpted German boys, a long blonde-haired man with a ponytail from Austria, and a punk rock Wales man with a mullet. The cute lady that had given me instructions is the leader and the other 10 tourist hired locals to be their guide so they can sit back and soak in the sights without worrying about driving off a cliff.
I turn the key into ignition and head off. I’m in the middle of the pack, but the further we drive the more I start to fall behind everyone else. We stop at a rice paddy terrace that is dried out, and there are two women farmers with wide brimmed hats tending to three water buffalo grazing. One of the buffalos is a baby and I take my camera out trying to snap as many pictures as I can.
We ride through a village that has a small stream full of children playing and waving to us as we pass. I take one hand off the wheel slowly and lose my balance to wave back at them. We stop off a little further at the stream to cool off, and then head into a quiet, rural town strewn with Vietnamese flags.
On the way to the next town, the Austrian man named David, wrecks his bike and barely misses diving off the cliff and falling hundreds of yards below. He hurt his wrist but brushes his pants off and gets back on. Worry clouds my mind. Death is a possibility. I recall reading multiple articles about tourist deaths that were caused by losing control of their bikes or being hit by a big truck rumbling unsteadily around a corner. I learn quickly to beep my horn around blind turns and in towns to let other people know I am there.
Eventually making it to our homestay, I pick a bed from 20 laying on the floor directly side by side. At dinner, one of the young drivers hands us shot glasses full of “happy water.” Taking a shot we recite,” Một, hai, ba, dô!Hai, ba, dô!Hai, ba, uống!” Happy water burns my throat going down and soon we are served another round, and then a third. Looking around the table, I notice that some of my friends are getting flushed cheeks and Sarah yells out,” Karaoke.” I avoid getting plastered because I do not want to deal with a hangover , but shamelessly join in on the singing .
Day 2:
The next morning, a scraggly goat runs from his family and into the road directly in front of my bike. I push my brakes as hard as I can and come to a skittering stop right before flattening the poor thing out and flipping my bike over its lifeless corpse. The front of my wheel barely tips the goat, but he falls on his left side, and looks at me accusingly. After a moment of us staring into each other’s eyes, he proceeds to stand up and run off to join the others. My heart is racing, and my knuckles have turned white on the handles from gripping them so hard. I push my gas in and jet out of there before any more problems ensue. My adrenaline is high and I’m feeling the wind whip past me nagging at my clothes.
We stop at a gas station to fill up our tanks. The leader gets everyone’s attention and states,” Guys we are going to be going through a construction area for the rest of the day.” Then she hands us a face mask to protect our lungs from the dust that is going to be stirred up.
The road from there on is dirt with huge ruts in it and rocks jutting out. It reminds me of home, and I smile. This is what I am used too. I maneuver through the obstacles smoothly, until we reach an area where cars are backed around a hill. Two large rock trucks are blocking the road. On one side of them is a dangerous edge and the other contains huge piles of gravels. We have come to a standstill and since my legs are short, I’m having a hard time balancing the bike on this uphill stretch. A man waves us through, and I give my bike some gas slowly. The weight of my backpack behind me is trying to pull me downhill, so I hit the throttle harder.
The room and village where we are staying at tonight is quite different from the last. We park our bikes beside a lively market. Colorfully dressed women and serious men crouch beside fresh vegetables and butchered meat bartering on prices with their customers. The hostel is full of bunk beds instead of mattresses on the floor. Almost everyone is wanting to retire early tonight, but I feel the need to get out and explore after dinner. Sarah, the Wales man named Terry, and I agree to go get a massage from one of the many parlors.
While we are getting a foot massage, a middle-aged man gets in between Sarah and I for a picture. He tries to get our phone number, but I do not concede. Sarah tells him to subscribe to her YouTube in which he does and then he leaves us in peace.
Final Day:
Our last day consists of views that look like they are straight out of a movie. Rolling mountains full of trees surround us. At one point I couldn’t stop on a hill and hit my brakes which caused my wheels to lock up and me to go sliding out of control. Luckily, I was able to reach down and turn off my key in the ignition. Our lovely leader provides us big sticks of crunchy, fresh sugarcane. I chew it until I drain all of the sweet juice out, and then spit the shell off of the mountain. We visit the wooden Hmong Palace which is well preserved. The two emperors that lived here became rich from opium.
Going around a hill, suddenly a rock rolls from the top of the mountain and almost crushes two people in front of me. The driver dodged it just in time, but from then on, I watched for that hazard as well.
When we made it back to the bustling town of Ha Giang, my heart welled with sadness as I said goodbye to all of the lovely people that I had met. One of the Belgium men patted me on the back and said,” Good job, you did it.” My heart about burst from my chest. He was right. I did it thanks to Daniel. He may not be here to congratulate me, but he has impacted me in ways that death could not even stop.
If you are interested in doing this trip as well, here is the hostel I went with.
Ha Giang Loop Tour (centralbackpackershostel.com)