Hoàng Su Phì Journey (To Vietnam's Terraced Rice Fields) 1

I decided to travel domestically for the first time in a while. It's Ha Giang, a place I've long wanted to visit. It's close to China, and in Vietnam it falls within the Northeast region. It's 300 km away from Hanoi. Why did I end up visiting this place... This place, with its beautiful terraced rice fields, is right now in the middle of the rice harvest season. They say the beauty of the greenery around June, when the rice grows after being planted, is also amazing, but the golden beauty of the time when the rice has ripened and the ears bow down is said to be truly exceptional. It seems they'll be harvesting the rice this weekend, so I'm going before that!!

So with that, I'm flying off together with my Vietnamese and Japanese friends who love traveling to remote, off-the-beaten-path places — the ones I always have such a great time hanging out with!

This time we'll be riding the bike quite a lot, so the rule was to keep our luggage to an absolute minimum~ So for the 4-night, 5-day trip (with one day of bus travel), the luggage was only as much as would fit in a backpack. Since it's meant to be a workation, I brought my laptop too. The compression bags from Muji were a huge help. Since my clothes are bound to get soaked with sweat and covered in dust, I focused on lightweight, quick-drying sports items, mostly from Uniqlo. Turns out you can travel surprisingly light!

We arrive in Hanoi at 8 PM. After riding for about four hours on the 10 PM deluxe sleeper bus, we first arrive at the hotel. We'll take a short nap. After resting for about four hours, we'll rent a motorbike and set off early in the morning at 6 AM!

We borrowed a helmet along with a relatively new bike and set off... but then, the luggage problem. Right, we just have to strap everything down somehow. Since bad roads are expected, it needs to be rock solid! Firmly, no matter what!! So the hotel auntie handed us some rubber straps for securing the luggage, saying "Use these however you like~," and we tied everything on with all our might. We're just not used to carrying big loads on a regular basis... so here we were, two full-grown adults struggling and fumbling away.

But this kind of thing is fun. To have a sense of stability, keep it parallel... make it symmetrical left and right... and so on. Going on and on about this and that...

In the end, when a Vietnamese guy who was totally used to it lent a hand, he did it in a flash with a smile!! And since he's a gym guy, his strength was off the charts, so he squished and squeezed the rubber cords tight with the greatest of ease and created a rock-solid backrest seat. After that, this luggage didn't budge one bit over 9 hours of rough roads and made it all the way to the inn. Our luggage, on the other hand, ends up collapsing, lol. So, the first meal at the start of such an eventful motorbike trip was...

Pho in the morning is the best after all. This stockpot — soup simmered over a wood fire. We have chicken, beef, and meatballs (tsukune) too.

I'm enjoying some chicken and grilled tsukune, and I'm starting off with a whole lot of extra vegetables. Relocation Life Ranking