Nguyen Binh – Bao Lac

We get up really late, since we don’t have as many kilometers planned today and I really don’t feel like getting up. But if I’d known there was a beautiful blue sky outside, I’d have moved a bit faster, but again we have a window 10 cm from the wall.

We left the heater on all night, so for a change it was too warm. For breakfast we eat the melon we bought yesterday. Before heading out we go check out the market, and Jozef buys proper gloves.

Today there are also women from the Red Dao minority, wearing beautiful traditional costumes.

The market also has a top-tier barbershop section, and they sell basically every animal here in bamboo cages, even kittens.

Then we set off on the same road as yesterday, toward the national park. In the village of Tinh Tu we go straight for lunch. We sit down at a nice-looking restaurant. All we understand from the owner is that there’ll be rice, so we’re curious what we’ll get. We also see tea and a teapot, so we point at it. We get a plate of rice, some green leaves, chicken, duck and beef, tofu and some rolls. It’s quite a big meal.

Over lunch we review the trip and what we like and don’t like, sorting out a few things, hopefully things go better from here. Surprisingly the whole thing costs just 100000 dong (€4). We pass by a tin mine and start climbing into some serious hills.

We planned today’s route ourselves, just tracing a finger over the map. So we turn off the main road onto a less frequented one, which is a bit longer.

We pass through small villages full of kids who wave at us and are completely thrilled when I wave back. There are also a lot of landslides here, every few meters. Some even took out houses, you can tell since there are already 10 new little houses built a bit further along.

The road winds along the mountainside all the way to the village of Man Coc.

We continue on and the road starts getting rapidly worse until we’re on a narrow farm track. We’ve still got about 11 km to the main road. We move slowly, bouncing on the scooter the whole way, and after 6 km it starts making a strange noise. We’ve got a flat tire, we found a nail in the tire. So we continue on foot.

About 500 meters on there’s the first house, with some kids there who just point further down the road. We continue, Jozef walks faster than me.I have lot of layers today, I’ve got leggings, shorts and trousers on, and up top 2 t-shirts, a hoodie and a down jacket, so now I take it all off. Just walking, it’s genuinely pleasant here, like a lovely spring day.

The house density increases and everyone asks what happened. The mechanic who can fix it is by the main road. Luckily it’s downhill from here and we’ve got plenty of time. When we get there I’m drenched in sweat and I take off all layers.

We wait 15 minutes and get a new inner tube, pay 100000 dong and continue toward the town of Bao Lac. It’s more densely inhabited here now, and there’s a school every few kilometers. I feel like a queen from all the waving, but it’s genuinely lovely. We pass through Bao Lac, look around at hotels and go check out a viewpoint outside of town.

We stay at the second hotel, for 180000 a night. We turn on the heater and go shower. I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week now, and they’re starting to smell a bit and are all dusty, but I’ll manage in those two more days. Jozef picked a restaurant on Google Maps, of course based on whether they have beer on tap. It’s on the other side of town, but at least we get to walk, given how much we sit on the scooter. They don’t have beer on tap after all, but they’ve got pre-cooked food, so we just point at what we want. We get some pork, tofu, egg and vegetables. We’re just full and it settles a nicely on the way back. We pass a surprising number of karaoke bars, this place must really come alive in season. We’re rather going to sleep.

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Ban Gioc–Detian Falls – Nguyen Binh

We get up before 7am, pack our things, brush our teeth and set off at 7:15am. Nobody’s around at the whole place, everything’s unlocked. We continue on past the waterfalls. We’re not hungry yet, so we leave breakfast for the next village. We ride along the Vietnam-China border. It’s more deserted here than yesterday. We stop in the village of Bang Ca and look for a breakfast spot.

At one place there are just some strange heads and feet, so we head to the market instead. One lady is making these little rolls with an egg fried on a pan, which she then puts into soup, plus pâté with it.

Probably not many tourists come through here, since everyone’s watching us eat. The soup was great, though we don’t know what it’s called. Then I go buy some cookies at a shop, so I’ve got something for emergencies. We continue and wander through small villages, where you need to watch out not to hit a rooster.

Large sheets of sliced cassava dry along the road for pigs. About an hour on we stop in the town of Thanh Nhat. We go for coffee. We find a place with about 10 men, drinking beer and rice wine at 9am. Some of them are already pretty drunk, so we just quickly finish our coffee and continue. It’s still cloudy, but starting to get a bit warmer. We ride between green hills and fields.

We finish the loop and we’re back in Quang Uyen. We have a baguette each and continue toward Cao Bang. We’ve still got a long way ahead, so we bypass the town. Past it, by the road, we stop for lunch, worried there won’t be much else further on. It’s a buffet-style restaurant, so I take rice, tofu and some vegetables, Jozef adds pork belly. I’m not that hungry, so it takes me a while to finish. We continue on, higher into the mountains.

Our destination is the mountain village of Nguyen Binh, which isunder construction right now. New paths are being built and a lot of trucks pass through, so there’s dust absolutely everywhere. We want to find accommodation here, so we go from hotel to hotel. We find one for 200000 dong. We drop our things and go look for some fruit at the market. Not much selection, so we buy a melon for 66000 dong. Then we look for a place to have tea, since it’s grown here too, but everywhere we go they only have mixed syrupy stuff, and we couldn’t explain that we just wanted plain green tea. In the end we have coffee, but explaining we wanted it plain, with nothing added, was also a struggle. We’ve still got about two hours of daylight, so we go check out Phja Oac – Phja Den National Park.

The number of landslides along the road increases after Typhoon Yagi, which hit here in September.

Repairs are still ongoing on some stretches. We climb to a pass at 1400 m elevation. The temperature drops noticeably. From there you can ride the scooter all the way up Nui Phja Oac hill, so we figure since we’re here, we’ll just push through the cold somehow. We climb 500 meters over 5 km, it takes us about 20 minutes. Jozef can’t feel his hands at the top. We quickly take some photos and head back.

The way down is a bit worse than going up and it’s slowly starting to get dark. We ride the last 15 minutes in the dark, which isn’t pleasant at all. We covered a total of 200 km today. It was prettier than yesterday, more hills and remote roads, and it seemed a bit warmer too. At the hotel we shower, warm up a bit and go look for something for dinner. We’re probably going too late, since we can’t find any place open. Eventually we find one spot where there’s some kind of celebration going on, and the lady makes us fried rice with egg. There’s a family celebration or dinner going on in the back, from which Nam wanders over to us. He’s fairly drunk and has no sense of personal space, Jozef’s personal space specifically. He asks where we’re from, our names, whether we’re married and if we have kids. Then he takes photos with us and toasts with beer. He wants rice wine too, but I decline that. Soon they leave, and the others laugh at him for being so drunk. He then invites us to a karaoke bar, those are genuinely popular here. Once they leave, we can finally eat in peace while watching Paw Patrol, which a little boy there’s watching.

Along with the rice we get some fermented vegetables, and bananas and sweet potato for dessert. Not many tourists probably come through here, since children peek at us from around the corner and are thrilled when we greet them. We’ve had quite enough for today, so we go to sleep, we’d left the heater on so it’s relatively warm. The bed’s hard as a board, but that’s standard here. I’d wanted to publish the blog too, but I just don’t have the energy, so I sleep for an hour and then post it.

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Cao Bang – Ban Gioc–Detian Falls

At 2am I need to pee, so I go ask if they could stop somewhere. They say we’ll be stopping in 10 minutes. I grab toilet paper, my phone and money. They drop me off by some restaurant. It’s genuinely pretty gross there. I pee fast and go back. We pick up a few more people who’d just finished at a pub. We stand there about another half hour. I put in earphones, since they’re snoring pretty loudly. I doze off again and wake up after 5am at the station in Cao Bang. It’s already fairly lively, probably also serving as a market. Our bus takes us on into the town center. Outside the bus doors about 6 men stand competing to offer us a taxi. I don’t even know where I am, let alone where I’m heading. So we continue on foot and go look for food. At the market everyone’s getting ready to sell, and in some places people are still sitting around. We find an open soup place and have pho ga chicken broth. A family’s getting ready to head out there, giving the kids breakfast, and the mother combs her daughter’s hair. Then she points at me with the comb, that I should comb my hair too, and honestly, fair point. They leave and shortly after a group of teenagers arrives, not sure if they’re finishing up or starting their day. They’re fairly chatty. We finish eating and go for a walk around town and along the riverside promenade. The sun’s starting to rise already.

We buy some sweet iced tea from a shop and go for a look round the market. They’ve got a really big meat section there. Then we go to see where the rental shop is. It’s still closed, but the lady at the side entrance tells us to text the number. So we send a message via WhatsApp saying we’d like to rent a bike, asking when they open, and that we’re off for a coffee. It’s already 7 o’clock and we find a café that’s open. We order black coffee, but as always, there’s something added to it that we can’t identify. The lady from the rent shop replies, and we sort out the details of the rent. She isn’t at home, but her mum helps us out. So we head over there. We rent a semi-automatic motorbike for four days for 600,000 dong (€24). We leave our laptop and a few other things we don’t need there. First, we head to a chemist’s, as sunny weather is forecast and I want to buy some sunscreen. I buy some Vietnamese sunscreen and then we go to fill up with petrol. We don’t have a specific destination in mind, just heading towards the waterfalls. All around us is beautiful countryside and steep green hills.

We pass an overturned truck, it’s a fairly winding road. It’s properly cold on the scooter. I’m wearing three-quarters of my clothes. It’s still early morning and we’ve got plenty of time, so we make a detour to Thang Hen Lake. Entry there costs 30000 dong. We pay and go to the lake. It’s a bit low and the promised turquoise water is more on the green side. Almost nobody’s here, so at least we walk around it.

We go check out one more nearby viewpoint. This one’s great. A view of a mountain with a big hole in the middle of it.

We continue on, and with the cold and my sleep deficit, I start getting seriously drowsy on the scooter. We stop in the town of Quang Uyen and go eat, hoping it perks me up. We can’t find anything suitable, but then we come across a Bun Cha restaurant. Good choice. The portion is just the right amount for me, so Jozef goes off for a baguette at a stall.

Then we want coffee, and we find a café, but it doesn’t even have a Vietnamese coffee. So we go look for one where men are sitting around, there will be good coffee. And sure enough, we find one. We explain to the man we want coffee with no additives at all. While the coffee drips, he pours us green tea. He offers Jozef a cigarette, and it didn’t take much convincing.

Then he pulls out a bottle, which Jozef declines since he’s driving, but I have some. It tastes really good, it’s grapefruit rice wine. Our coffee’s ready, so we sip it along with the tea. We really like a café like this. Usually at the newer places they put all kinds of syrups in the coffee and tea and it’s hard to explain what we actually want. I’ve already found accommodation, 40 km away. We’d like to wrap up early today so we can get proper sleep. We wander further through the countryside and the sun starts peeking through the clouds, finally. When we reach the accommodation, the sky’s completely blue and there’s a great view over the river.

It’s open inside, but nobody’s there. We warm up in the sun and wait half an hour. Nobody shows up, so we go check out the nearby waterfalls, which a lot of tourists visit.

They’re right on the border with China. We pay 40000 dong entry and walk around. To our surprise there aren’t many people, and the waterfalls are beautiful.

I’ve still got two pairs of trousers, a down jacket and gloves on, but for some people that’s a suitable swimming temperature.

We stay about an hour and head back. The owner’s there now, so we book a room for 200000 (€7.50). It’s basically a mattress on the floor, board walls and an open structure. But we get a proper duvet and a genuinely heavy blanket too. We shower and then sleep for 1.5 hours. We’d also booked dinner, since we really don’t feel like going back into town. We’re the only guests here and the lady makes us an omelet, pork, rice, fries and salad. We properly overate. In the evening I write and edit a bit more, but we want to get up early tomorrow, so I’d rather go to sleep.

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Cat Ba

I went to bed too late last night and it’s hard to get up. We wanted to leave at 8am, but only reach breakfast at 8:20am. The lady makes us each an omelet with a dry roll and sweet coffee. It’s really cold out today, about 15°C with light drizzle. Before heading to the ferry we go check out the market. Morning’s the best time. Crowds of people and lots of vendors everywhere.

Supermarkets basically don’t exist here, so you get everything at the market. Or an auntie has cuts of meat laid out anywhere on the street. We buy a bunch of bananas for the road. Jozef would never eat a banana back home, but here, one after another. They’ve got a sweet-sour taste. Then we head off toward the ferry. We choose the route through the middle of the island, for a bit of a change and nice green hills around us.

The trees are pretty broken from a typhoon that hit here two months ago. It’s unbelievably cold on the scooter. Wind-chill’s about 10°C and the scooter takes off another 10. We have to stop for a bit so my hands can warm out. Only a short way left to the harbor. We arrive and there’s already quite a line.

We want to buy tickets, but they’re not selling any. I try to find out what’s going on from a Vietnamese man, but I can’t follow his pantomime. Two Spaniards are waiting there too, they’d already found out what’s happening. The wind’s too strong for the ferry to run, and nobody knows how long it’ll last. So we wait. I tell Jozef this situation would be pretty unpleasant if we had, say, a flight to catch. We haven’t booked anything ourselves. After 10 minutes a guy comes up to ask what’s going on, since his flight leaves in 5 hours from Hanoi. Buses full of tourists are already turning around, and I’m getting hungry, and on top of that there’s the unpleasant cold. So I ask one of the Spaniards, Dany, for his contact, to text me if it starts up, since we’re going to eat. We drive a few kilometers back and go into the first restaurant. We order pho bo beef soup, hoping it’ll warm us up a bit. Instead the lady brings us some kind of pork soup, and it’s not good at all, but we don’t have the energy to sort it out, I was just glad to have something warm, even though I could barely keep it down. And then complete hopelessness set in for me. I texted Dany asking if there’s any update, and nothing. So we give up and head back to the hotel. We get a new room on the 7th floor, I hadn’t even realized it was that tall. It smells a bit of mold and it’s pretty damp there, but at least it’s not cold. We dive under the duvet right away, but just can’t warm up. Only after a good two hours am I finally warm and we go to sleep. We wake up around 4pm and go eat at the same restaurant as yesterday. Along the way we exchange more money, the rate is 1 EUR = 25700 dong. For dinner I have shrimp and Jozef oysters.

I try one too and it’s actually pretty good. At the table next to us is a group of about 10 Vietnamese people doing hotpot (they’ve got a stove with a pot of broth on the table, and they cook all kinds of meat and vegetables in it). They’re washing it down with rice wine they brought in a demijohn. We go for a bit more of a walk around town. At one stall I have a Thai pancake, I need it after today. At the hotel the owner tells us the ferry didn’t run at all today, so I’m glad we only waited there about 1.5 hours. And tomorrow morning she’ll text me whether it’s running or not, so we don’t overreact again. Today wasn’t a great day, but you can’t always have good luck. In the evening I catch up on the blog I fell behind on and go to sleep at least before midnight.

Sunday, 15.12.2024

Cat Ba – Hai Phong – Cao Bang

In the morning at 7am I text the owner about whether the ferry’s running. It is! So we pack fast and go down for breakfast. We have an omelet like yesterday, just I have coffee with milk and Jozef tea instead. When we head outside, it’s noticeably warmer than yesterday, and I’m wearing more layers too. We don’t stop anywhere and head along the coast straight to the harbor. We arrive right on time and board the ferry within 5 minutes.

We eat the bananas we bought last night. Then we head to Hai Phong on the highway, an hour away. We look for a bank before returning the scooter and withdraw 6000000 dong. We don’t know how frequent ATMs will be where we’re heading. We return the scooter, pay an extra 150000 for the extra day, and go for a coffee. Then to the railway station to find out when the train leaves. According to the board, at 3pm and 4:30pm. We ask the lady at the window too, and it’s confirmed. We also try to find out from her which station our train to Cao Bang leaves from, but no luck. I’d looked something up online, so we go to Cao Rau station. Along the way we look for something to eat. In a hidden little alley we find a man cooking fried rice with pork belly, egg and vegetables. Fed, we decide to continue on foot. We watch all sorts of bizarre things, people sleeping on their scooters, a wedding.

We reach where the station should be, but there’s nothing there, so we ask a guy, who directs us to another station 3 km further. We’ve got time, so we continue on foot. We pass more weddings and then reach a residential area. We walk past houses under construction. There are 3 men and 2 women working on one site. I’ve seen a woman near the mixer here several times now. This type of house is genuinely interesting. They’re about 4 m wide and have at least two floors.

The ground floor has glass doors, and they either run a business there or use it as a living room. It was funny watching in the evening how one family was having dinner on the floor and watching TV. We reach the station and ask about the bus to Cao Bang. It leaves at 7pm and a ticket costs 400000 dong per person. We’ve got about 6 hours. So we go look around the area some more. Nearby we find a pub that pours beer, so we go there. Jozef spreads out his work and I write the blog. At the next table there’s already a fairly tipsy group of Vietnamese people, and we share a shot of rice wine with them. Then they head home, on scooters. We stick around for a couple of hours and then go look for a restaurant for food. We can’t find anything suitable, so we go to the station restaurant instead. Then we brush our teeth and board the sleeper bus.

You take your shoes off inside, they give you a bag for them and a blanket. It’s fairly stylish in here, the lights are like something out of a massage parlor. The seats are permanently in a lying position. It’s fine for me, Jozef just has to fold himself in somehow. He decided it was a good idea to tell me how, every time he’s on a bus like this, he thinks about how it would break his legs in a crash. Even so I fall asleep right at the start of the trip, just for an hour though. Then I write the blog. I post it only after midnight and go to sleep a bit more.

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Cat Ba – Ha Long bay

We get up after 7am and head into town at 7:45am for breakfast. We pick a lady right by the road making baguettes. I have one, Jozef has two with egg, pâté and coriander. Meanwhile I remember I left my memory card at the accommodation, so Jozef goes back for it. When it’s time to pay, the lady thinks it over for a while and finally tells us 70000, we really can’t figure out how she got to that number for 3 baguettes. We reach the harbor a bit after 8am. We’ve still got time, so we go for a coffee next door and have one more chicken baguette packed for the road. We wait about 15 minutes for our group, there are only 18 of us total. Then we go through a turnstile onto the pier and wait for our boat. About 5 are docked here, and quite a few people are streaming in, given it’s cloudy and off-season.

Jozef marvels again at how much it’s changed here since he was last here, 8 years ago. Our boat arrives within 15 minutes. I love the interior, it looks so luxurious. First we get some instructions from our guide, and then we all head up to the deck. Our guide, Salu, tells us about the island, the people, Vietnam. First we pass through fishing villages.

People live there normally year-round and go out on boats daily to catch fish. Vietnam welcomes tourists a lot, since it’s an important part of the economy, and without them, they’d have no one to sell fish to. We head toward Ha Long Bay, a popular tourist destination. It’s mostly accessed from the town of Ha Long, from where huge tourist ships also run multi-day cruises, which is a whole different price bracket. The whole area’s listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. It’s made up of limestone rocks and small islets rising above the water.

It’s a huge area, and it doesn’t even seem like this many boats could be moving through it. After about two hours we stop so we can go for a swim. The temperature’s about 17°C. We’re among the first to work up the nerve, and others follow after us. The water’s fairly pleasant compared to the surrounding air. We swim for about 10 minutes, some people jump off the top of the boat. A boat docks next to us and starts blasting loud party music. We’re a more conservative crowd, so we’d rather leave.

Next up is kayaking. We each get a vest and dock at a floating harbor with a pile of kayaks. We pair up and set off as a group. We take the route everyone here takes, through three caves. It’s beautiful here though. The first cave is just a short passage, the second has some really nice formations, and the third was fairly shallow, so every other kayak got stuck and traffic jams formed there. Behind it was just a turquoise bay, and then we headed back.

It takes about an hour and a half, and then lunch awaits. We anchor at a lovely spot and settle in at three tables. Lunch is a real treat. Spring rolls, chicken, tofu, fish, squid, salad, and rice are all brought to the table, and everyone dishes into a small bowl what they want. Melon for dessert. At our table we eat almost everything. Two Israelis sit with us, and we chat about traveling. They tell Jozef he looks like the actor Christian Bale. They ask if we’re related or what, so they’re a bit surprised when I say we’re married. After lunch the French group goes to play some game, the Israelis go for cards, and we go up on deck to the loungers, where we chat with an American. We’re getting pretty sleepy, so we take a short nap.

If I had a blanket, I could sleep for two hours, but my butt was cold. Meanwhile we sail up to Monkey Island. We anchor a bit away and can go swim to the island, but nobody has the energy for the cold water anymore. From a distance we see some monkeys running around the beach. We stay there about half an hour and wrap up the cruise earlier than planned. We’re at the harbor by 4pm, and from there we go for a ride around the area. We find some genuinely nice beaches and trails with views.

We go drop our things at the hotel and I convince Jozef to go for a run. I plan a 5.5 km route, it’s already dark, so we bring a headlamp too. We meet a lot of exercising/running Vietnamese people. The run was great, we shower and are pretty hungry, so we go eat. We’d spotted some restaurants while running, so we head that way. We settle at one that pours beer, where the lady lets us choose between sitting normally inside or outside on small plastic stools. Of course we pick outside.

We have fried rice with seafood. It’s a lot for me, so Jozef finishes off mine. Then we stop at the market to buy pomelo, since we’ve seen tons of them everywhere. We head to the hotel. I edit videos and eat pomelo, which Jozef laboriously peeled. He goes to sleep and I stay up until midnight.

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Hanoi – Hai Phong – Cat Ba

Hanoi is definitely not a quiet city. Good thing I brought earplugs. Early in the morning we’re woken by the aunties already preparing food for the whole day. We get up at 8am, pack everything fast and head toward the market. Along the way we stop for coffee at some man’s stand. We ask for no sugar, no milk, but it’s sweetened anyway. We sit on mini stools for a bit and continue. At the market we buy a little container and a knife. Jozef towers three heads above everyone else. Near the market we find a spot for breakfast. We have a pho bo soup.

We try to find an Agribank ATM, which has the lowest fees, but can’t find it anywhere. Once we give up and go withdraw at a random ATM, we spot it right next door. We withdraw 3 million dong, almost €120. Today we want to move on to Cat Ba island. We found out the bus to Hai Phong leaves from Gia Lam station, still about 3 km away. We cross the 1.7 km long railway bridge over the Red River. And it’s not exactly pleasant. In the middle there’s the railway, on either side motorbike lanes, and along the railing a very narrow walkway made of reinforced concrete blocks that don’t look very trustworthy.

But the chance it’d actually collapse is pretty small. We walk through Hanoi’s non-touristy alleys now. There are top-tier barbershops right on the street here, but it’s still early. We reach the station and ask the lady at the window when the bus to Hai Phong leaves. She points us to a stall right by the entrance. We buy tickets for 120000 dongs per person, and it leaves in 10 minutes. The bus has nice leather seats, but it’s built for Vietnamese height. Buses here also work as couriers. You just wave down a bus and it’ll deliver a package to a pickup point, where the other side can collect it. One man was sending a meter-tall lime tree, so they put it on the seats instead of the storage compartment.

It’s interesting watching the landscape out the window, but I’m tired too, so I sleep for an hour. The bus drops us off on the edge of town, earlier than we’d expected. There’s no scooter rental nearby, so we walk 4 km across the whole city. A lot of people wear masks here, so the air quality’s probably not great. I’m getting pretty hungry, but we sort the scooter out first. We happen to find a rental place a bit sooner than the one we’d marked on the map. We wake up the man, who’d just dozed off in a chair, and he calls over someone who speaks a bit of English. We agree on 2 days for 300000 dong. We try on pretty much every helmet, and Jozef finally picks one with little bears on it. We set off.

I have to navigate, so I’ve got my phone in one hand. He tells me that when I spot a good place to eat, I should tap him on the shoulder and we’ll stop, but by the time I notice one, we’re already 100 meters past it, and then we join a fast highway. So no eating for a while. It takes us about 45 minutes to reach the ferry. My leg’s gone completely numb from the scooter, so I hop over to buy tickets, 2 people and a scooter, 48000 dong. We wait about 15 minutes.

We board and go up to the second deck for the view. I’m pretty cold, since it’s all open. Jozef told me back home that it’d be warm in Vietnam, he wore shorts all last time he was here, and he’s still got them on now. Half an hour later we’re on the island and quickly speed off toward the town of Cat Ba, specifically to the harbor. We want to book a boat trip for tomorrow. The moment we stop, a woman catches us offering a trip for one million two hundred thousand, which seems like a lot. So we go look further. We’d thought there’d be a lot of people offering boat trips, but there’s nobody anywhere. Eventually a man approaches us, who has a tour agency there, and we book a trip for 590000 dong per person. That includes a full-day cruise, lunch, kayaking, some swimming and Monkey Island.

Then we finally head to our hotel in town. It’s really cheap, but with good reviews. A friendly Vietnamese woman greets us. The room has two windows, but with maybe 10 cm to the next building, and a walk-in shower. We drop our things and go eat. The town center’s fairly touristy. Jozef’s shocked at how much it’s changed here. Construction everywhere. Where there used to be a beach there are now about 30 machines building some megalomaniac project. We head back the way we came, since there were restaurants there we liked the look of. But suddenly we can’t find them, and when we do stop somewhere, they’re offering odd dishes. And Jozef had told me we wouldn’t have to hunt for restaurants here. I’m getting properly hungry now, and nervous, but finally we sit down at one that also pours beer. We order beef noodles and the lady prepares it right in front of us, outside. Within a few minutes we’ve got food on the table, so I’m happier now. On the way back we look for some kind of baguette, but find nothing, so we go buy fruit at the market instead. We buy mango, bananas and dragon fruit.

Once we’re back at the hotel, we eat some fruit and then I completely black out for about an hour. I wake up feeling pretty fresh, take a shower and edit videos. It takes me a good while and I go to sleep after midnight.

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Budapest – Guangzhou – Cam Ranh – Hanoi

Vietnam is a country I’ve heard about from Jozef about a million times. If he could move there, he already would have. So when he kept talking about it so much, I said he could take me there. We bought flights for 5 weeks, since they were cheap and life in Vietnam works out cheaper for us than in Slovakia anyway. It’s a tight fit, since we decided at the last minute to also go to Paraguay, so we were home for about 10 days total. When I floated the idea of not going to Vietnam, Jozef nearly had a heart attack. He’s really looking forward to it. We’ve barely planned anything. We just have a few points marked on the map, which I started looking at a week before we left, just so I’d know what cities are where.

Before we leave I feel pretty neutral, I pack the day before, it takes about an hour, and I don’t have any expectations.

The last few days we’ve been visiting people, having beers, saying goodbyes. We fly out of Budapest on Tuesday at 11:55am. In theory we could make it by train, but if anything went wrong, we’d miss the flight. Luckily, brother-in-law Milan doesn’t start work until the afternoon, so he drives us. We leave Partizánske at 5:30am and put on a podcast about minimalism in travel. The drive goes fairly fast. In Hungary I have to navigate so we avoid the toll highway. We slip onto it once, but only for a short stretch, hopefully there’s no camera there yet. We’re at the airport at 9:15am. We check in at the counter. We ask for seats next to each other, and we get them for both flights. Then security, which we clear fast, and passport control too. Jozef buys a Pilsner and does a bit of work while he has time. It all goes by quickly and we’re already boarding the China Southern Airlines flight. I’m pretty tired, so I fall asleep right away for about an hour and a half, and then they bring us food, chicken with rice and vegetables, some salad, fruit and a little cake. We have a beer with it and I put on The Help, one of my favorite films. Then, surprisingly, I watch films I hadn’t seen before, Hidden Figures and Little Miss Sunshine, and I’m happy with the picks, would recommend. They bring us food again, but no more beer. I have chicken again, though it’s not very good this time, Jozef has fish, which is better. Our seatmate even gives Jozef his salad, he probably looked like he’d eat more. I’m getting pretty sleepy, so I try to get comfortable. I put on Harry Potter in Spanish as background noise. I doze off a bit, but then we start descending. We land in Guangzhou at 5am local time (a 7-hour time difference). It’s a huge airport, just moving between planes takes 15 minutes, and then another 10 minutes on a bus, which smells terrible. We go for transit and go through passport control and security again. They’re fairly pedantic and people who don’t have their things ready get their whole bags rummaged through. We don’t have much time, so we just find our gate and finish off all our bread rolls from home. Then we take a brutally air-conditioned bus to the plane. I fall asleep right away and only wake up for food. I’m not even that hungry, but I have the chicken noodles anyway. To get to the airport we need to go through immigration, we’d done our visas online. We exchange some money at one of five exchange offices lined up next to each other. It’s funny how each one calls out to us, even though they all offer the same rate. It’s pleasantly warm in Cam Ranh, but pouring rain, so we scrap our plan to walk on the beach. Instead we lay out on padded benches and go to sleep. We sleep for two hours and then go look around the nearby shops. Jozef has a baguette, banh mi, and I have iced coffee. One more security check and we’ve got our last two-hour flight ahead with the budget airline Bamboo Airways. I sleep through this one entirely too. In Hanoi, taxi drivers stop us at the airport, but we know we’re taking the bus. We seem to have just missed one, since we wait over half an hour. It finally comes, we pay 45000 dong per person, and get off in the center half an hour later. Our accommodation’s fairly close, so we go drop off our things right away. Reviews were mixed, so we’re not sure what to expect. It’s called Hidden Gem, and it really is hidden, but we find it by the hause number. It’s actually a room at a woman’s home, so I show her the booking and pay. We just set our things down and head into the city. Jozef’s got a restaurant picked out for bun cha. It’s fairly full, so we sit upstairs. We share a bun cha combo and spring rolls, and get a heaped plate of salad with it. It’s pretty good, we’d just expected a bit more spice. Then we go for a walk around evening Hanoi. Locals exercise or dance in groups. Jozef wants to go for a beer somewhere, so he finds a local place, where they pour us 2 liters of beer into a jug. We settle right by a baguette stall, on tiny stools. Jozef’s very happy. We split one more baguette in half, and Cherry, a restaurant guide, approaches us saying to message her if we need anything. A proper slump hits us, but we still want to check out “beer street.” Jozef sat there having a beer with locals 8 years ago, on small plastic stools. Now it’s bar after bar, each blasting different loud music. You can’t even move through it. It’s pretty rough here, exactly the kind of place we try to avoid. Ugh, we push through to the end and go get some sleep instead.

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Sedlo Hliny – Oravská Polhora

→ 33,5 km ↑ 1811 m ↓ 1945 m – total 131,5 km

Last night we’d talked about whether we’d try to make today’s last bus from Oravská Polhora to Kysuce. We had the ambition, but I forgot to set the alarm, so we get up at 6:40am and we’d have to run to make it. For breakfast we have porridge again and coffee. I even wash the dishes in the little stream. Standing up for the first time is genuinely painful, hopefully it’ll walk off. From our sleeping spot we head into the forest, where we see a blue marker. Clearly nobody walks it, since we lose it right away, so we cut across the forest to rejoin the red trail. We start with a steep climb, as usual.

Today really won’t be easy. It’s the fourth day and right from the morning I’m in crisis. Jozef’s doing fine, but he’s supportive. We pass a lot of bear droppings, but none fresh, all older.

We run into three Poles doing the Główny Szlak Beskidzki, we’d already seen them yesterday too. We take a break at the same spot, by a shelter with a spring. There’s a fairly nice view there, but the shelter’s not in the best shape.

The spring’s like a little pool, with a bit of water flowing from it. I fill a cup and pour it into the water bladder to filter, the Poles just fill their bottles directly. Then they joke about whether they’ll catch E. coli from that water. I convince Jozef to make pasta for lunch. I’m hungry after yesterday’s light dinner, and we’ve still got a lot of climbing ahead. So he cooks pasta with tuna and tea too. It really hits the spot and I walk better after it. Shortly after, we reach the northernmost point of Slovakia. If I hadn’t pointed it out, Jozef wouldn’t even have noticed.

From there it’s still 8 km to Babia hora with 850 meters of elevation, but also 260 meters down. We keep descending, so I jog down a bit to speed things up. That means only one thing, the climb later will be steeper. We finally reach that climb, it’s fairly steep and then goes back down again, so that still wasn’t it.

Now we’re really going up, climbing in silence, slowly but steadily. The higher we go, the sparser the vegetation. Not a soul in sight. Every so often Jozef switches on his phone to handle some work call. Meanwhile I keep grinding uphill.

Before Malá Babia hora thunder rumbles. Just to be safe we check the weather, it’s far off, holding over the Tatras, so we continue. At the summit we take a photo together with Babia hora wrapped in clouds in the background. We shoot it on self-timer, the tripod’s mounted on the trail marker post.

Along a well-maintained path we run down to the pass, where there’s even a paved path from the hut on the Polish side. We meet one woman. Must have been a crowd here yesterday. The paved path continues uphill too.

Every so often we pass a snowfield. A strong wind’s blowing up top and we layer up. We’re slowly entering fog.

We’d both assumed Babia hora was some kind of flat hill, but it’s not. We’re finally up. We meet a Pole with three kids there. He asks us about the route ahead, they’re doing a loop from Slaná voda. I show him on the map which way to go. One boy’s barefoot, so I point it out. The father says he walked in his shoes halfway up the hill, but doesn’t like wearing them, so he keeps them in his pack.

I’m glad we’re finally up, and from here it’s just over 10 km and 1000 meters down. We move at a gentle jog. The path’s paved with stones in places and a complete mess in others, the kind where you can really twist an ankle.

We’ve got a view over all of Orava region and we can see a storm forming and rumbling ahead of us, glad we’re heading down already.

We pass a shelter where I’d originally wanted to sleep. A pretty nice spot, you sleep in the loft, there’s a spring, and it’s not too far from the summit, so great if you want to catch sunrise. After 3 km and 500 meters of elevation we take a break at the lookout tower. My feet hurt and I’m starting to stumble.

At least we finish off the tortillas with Kolatch, and that’ll keep my energy up till the end. One more kilometer of steep descent and then an endless road into Oravská Polhora awaits us.

It’s fairly gentle now, and I need to put in more effort just to move forward. We pass another lookout tower, standing on flat ground with no view from it at all, we don’t get why they build towers like that. We cross the 2.5 km long Hviezdoslavova alley, which is straight, endless, and we can’t see the end of it.

I try to shuffle my little legs as fast as I can. Jozef thinks I’m stumbling, since one of his steps equals two of mine, but going any faster would mean running. We finally reach the paved road with a giant bench, so I climb up on it to break up the walk a bit. Jozef goes to fill a bottle with Slaná voda mineral water at the spring, and I continue on toward Polhora.

I walk along checking my phone for when our bus goes. It’s in an hour, but the long way round through Kraľovany and Žilina, meaning we’d be in Raková before midnight. Just to be safe I also check Blablacar. Surprisingly there’s a ride from Klin, two villages over, to Krásno nad Kysucou. I text Martin asking if he’d be willing to come pick us up in Oravská Polhora. He replies, sure. We agree he’ll pick us up in the village in 20 minutes. Jozef catches up to me. Some guys sitting around had filled his bottle with the mineral water and he was about to drink it straight away, but they stopped him, saying it’s probably not good for drinking. One of them takes it home for his grandfather to soak his feet in it. So Jozef just takes a decilitre to taste, it’s really salty. Above Námestovo that storm looks scary, hopefully it doesn’t catch us.

We made it, I’ve had quite enough! We change into cleaner clothes, so Martin doesn’t pass out from the smell in the car, and 5 minutes later we’re already driving. I’m glad this ride worked out and we’ll be in Kysuce earlier than before midnight. As we approach that darkness, rain starts, and within a few minutes it’s an absolute downpour. There are a few centimeters of water on the road and hail starts joining in too. It’s quite the storm, the surrounding hills are white from all that hail. Within 5 minutes we’re out of it and the sun’s shining. Martin drives fairly fast, which makes me feel a bit sick, but at 7:30pm we get out in Krásno. Our bus is in an hour, so we go to Pohoda Burger. From outside it doesn’t look too inviting, but inside it’s actually a pretty pleasant place. We each have a beer and order a burger. To our surprise, fries are included in the price, so it’s fairly cheap. For 3 beers and two burgers with fries we pay €30, and I can’t even finish mine. The bus stop’s right in front of the place, so we head out 3 minutes before departure. It’s 15 minutes to Čadca, and there we wait 10 minutes to change to the Raková bus. At 9pm we’re in Raková and go to hitchhike toward Korcháň. Jozef’s skeptical, but I’ve hitchhiked here many times before and someone always stops for me, since there’s always someone around who knows me and stops. We wait behind the tracks under a lamp, so we’re visible. We wait 10 minutes and no car. First a van passes, and right behind it a car, which stops for us. My first question is whether they’re going to Korcháň, and only after a few seconds do I realize it’s Tono, my classmate from elementary school. Even though he lives in Raková, he drives us to Korcháň. We hadn’t seen each other in a proper long time, and it was a really lovely encounter. Funnily enough, while walking today I was actually thinking about what a school reunion would be like, wondering what everyone’s up to now. At 9:30pm we’re home, exhausted, but happy that we pulled off this madness. We’ll wait about three years now to forget what it was like, and I’d guess we’ll set out again someday, even though right now we’re saying never again

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Sedlo Príslop – Sedlo Hliny

→ 39,5 km ↑ 1869 m ↓ 2016 m – total 98 km

I slept like a rock the whole night. We wake up at 6:15am with no alarm. We’ve got a long day ahead of us today, so we get straight up. I walk barefoot on the grass for a bit. Jozef makes breakfast, oat porridge for me and a savory Katka porridge with garlic flavor for himself. Surprisingly it tastes really good and has a great ingredients too, just lentils, spices and salt, and a lot of protein. Then we have coffee. We pack up everything and set off at half 7:30am. We start with that top-tier 30% climb up Svítková. It’s only half a kilometer, but it takes us 20 minutes.

It went better than I’d expected. We continue on to Talapkov Beskyd. Today we’ve got an ambitious plan, we tweaked the route a bit so we can manage it in 4 days. Every so often views open up over Malá Fatra.

Jozef remembers it’s English Monday today, so we switch to English. On Panský kopec I pull down my panties, since they’re chafing and it’s getting pretty uncomfortable. I continue without them, walking’s much better right away. We stop briefly at Podúšust and fuel up before the climb up Úšust. Hnilická Kýčera’s been beaten. This climb is absolutely terrible. We stop every few minutes. Halfway up Jozef checks the map and finds out there was actually a way around it, but since we hadn’t noticed the turn-off, it was probably in bad shape anyway. The closer we get to the top, the steeper it gets, eventually reaching 50%.

We’re finally up, the other side’s a bit gentler for about a kilometer and then drops steeply down to Delená voda. The little spring’s not great, no water’s flowing and it’s all waterlogged there, but we’ve still got enough water. It’s called Delená voda (Divided Water) because the water flows off from there in both directions, meaning part of it ends up in the Baltic Sea and part in the Black Sea. There’s a table with benches, so we take a break and eat tortillas. First a savory one with tuna, sugo and garlic, then a sweet one with a cinnamon-almond tube from Kolatch. We continue on through the forest.

We’d thought it would get gentler after Úšust, but it’s still constant up and down, and steeply too. Nature calls, good thing I always carry a trowel. Jozef reads the news meanwhile while I go handle it in the forest. When I get back he tells me the Pope died. That makes me sad. I remember sitting in the common room at our dorm in high school watching his election. On the last kilometer before Novoťanské sedlo Hlinka my feet already really hurt and I need a moment to rest. The pass has a parking lot full of Polish cars. On the Slovak side there’s a new shelter built, with seating areas and sleeping platforms, a bike charging station and an outlet. There are toilets next to it, which Jozef goes to use while I take off my shoes and stretch my legs a bit. I don’t know how I’ll manage today’s planned destination. Three kilometers away is the hut below Kraví vrch, so this stretch is busy, we only meet Poles.

The hut sits in a meadow and there are a lot of people there. No wonder, it’s genuinely beautiful here. The prices match the high demand. We get two žurek soups and three Brackie beers. Luckily you can pay in euros too, so we pay €28. We take the soup outside. I’d most like to just lie down here and take a nap. We drag ourselves along, not really wanting to continue.

It’s already 3pm and we’ve still got 18 km ahead, we’ll need to really pick up the pace. I manage to speed up a bit and we even run downhill. All day we keep passing frog spawn, which always makes me happy to see.

We gradually climb higher and every so often hit mud and marshes, which we can’t manage to cross with dry feet.

At the turn-off to the hut where we’d originally planned to sleep, we decide to keep going another 10 km. We’ve got a climb ahead up Pilsko hill, but not quite as steep. We come across the last remnants of snow too.

We fuel up with a protein bar and keep climbing. We’re finally up. There’s a lovely view from here over Babia hora and the Polish side of the Tatras.

A bit below the summit we top up a little water. The wooden well’s broken, but you can fill up from the spring flowing higher up. Its water trickles down the trail. And we’d wanted to move fast. We’ve got 5 km and 750 meters of elevation left to the pass. Going down works out pretty well for me, so I hop around through the water. Jozef’s in crisis, his legs hurt so much that, in his own words, he’d “rather cut them off with an angle grinder.”

Even so, on the last kilometer we actually overtake some hikers. We look around for a suitable tent spot, but it’s all waterlogged here. We reach the pass and look for the toilets marked on the map. We’d wanted to top up water there, but it’s fenced off and under renovation. So we head for the restaurant instead, but there’s a private party going on there. I was already getting ready to go ask for water with my sweetest face, but a few hundred meters lower there’s a shop with water marked nearby. So we go try there instead. We find a wooden trough with running water. I’m genuinely glad, since the sun’s already set and we don’t have much time. We fill up water and I rinse the mud off my calves a bit. We head toward the forest along a farm track, so we’re not right out in the open. We find a bit of flat ground and pitch the tent. Since we forgot to dry it during the day, I wipe it down inside with a towel. There’s a little stream right next to it, where we go wash our feet, since they’re pretty smelly after three days of walking. After today’s distance, cold water can only do them good. We probably overdid it a bit, everything hurts and we just lie there. Jozef goes to cook an instant meal, “chicken paprikash.” We’d said we’d try it, but it’s not very good. I was worried cars would wake me at night, but I’m so tired I fall asleep instantly

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Vojty Lazy settlement – Sedlo Príslop

→ 35 km ↑ 1619 m ↓ 1418 m – total 58,5 km

The first rays of sun wake us before 6am, but it’s nice and warm in the sleeping bags and we really don’t feel like getting up, so we doze off for another hour and a half. We get up at 7:15am. Jozef makes coffee, gets rolls with salami and korbáčiky ready, and I do my Spanish Duolingo.

I climb out of the warm sleeping bag, stretch a bit, and go hang the water bladder on a tree so it can filter. I change straight into hiking clothes so I can start packing. We have chocolate with our coffee, brush our teeth, pack up the tent and set off. Breakfast and packing took us an hour, a good time for the first day. We continue on a gentle path around some settlements. The route I’d planned goes over Kýčerka hill, but we’d rather go around it, half a kilometer longer, but with nicer views.

We turn onto the blue trail heading down to Oščadnica. It’s a pretty waterlogged path, so we hop from side to side, and sometimes there’s nowhere to jump, so our shoes get soaked. Luckily we can already hear trains, so we’re close. By the train stop there’s a spring where we go top up water and make tea. If you thought some kind of teabag, you’d be wrong. Crouched by the railway track I sip Darjeeling while editing photos. Ahead of us is 12.5 km and 850 m of climbing to Veľká Rača. We cross the railway and a bridge over the Kysuca river.

We walk a bit along a cycling route by the river. I also go check out a viewpoint above the river with a view of the railway. Then we start climbing across a meadow above Oščadnica. We go around Čarovná lúka (Enchanted Meadow), an area where they grow flowers and lavender, where people come to take photos, but it’s still all covered over.

The village built a “bandits’ trail” with some funding, which by pure coincidence we now find ourselves on, so every kilometer we pass a big wooden statue of some highwayman with a sign next to it describing the history of banditry in the area. My reaction is basically: “that must have taken some real effort, and for something so pointless.”

At noon we take a break by the lookout tower below Kalinový vrch and eat rolls. We sit there about 10 minutes and a family with kids arrives to grill, so they set up at the next table . Jozef’s getting antsy and wants to move already, but I’m updating the blog, so he has to wait. The next break will be at the hut on Veľká Rača. We continue along the blue trail.

After 5 km we reach Dedovka, which is fairly busy, so we don’t even stop and climb the green trail up Rača. My energy’s starting to run out, so I have a candy and drag myself uphill. We pass more ski lifts. We were here about three years ago, but I don’t remember any of it. At 2pm we finally reach the hut. Jozef gets žurek soup and I get strawberry pierogi, with a beer of course. We pay by card and settle onto the terrace with a view. We wait about 15 minutes for the food, I’m starving by now. The strawberry pierogi turn out to be blueberry instead, which doesn’t bother me at all.

Fueled up, we set off on the next 15 km of today’s route. From here we more or less continue right along the Slovak-Polish border. The trail rolls along the ridge and every so often views open up on the Polish side.

After 4 km we stop by a little spring and top up water. We mix pomelo Tang, which we brought back from Argentina, into one bottle, for a bit more energy to keep walking. From there the trail continues mostly through forest, alternating between beech and spruce.

We really don’t feel like walking much anymore, but we need to keep a brisk pace to make it before dark. Two kilometers before today’s destination we fill all our containers at the Dvojistá voda spring. We also give ourselves a quick rinse, so we don’t go to sleep quite so dirty. Ahead of us is still a steep climb up some kind of rock formation. It reminds us of the climb up Veľký Polom.

From Rycierova hora it’s just 300 meters down to Sedlo Príslop above Vychylovka. This pass separates the Kysuce and Orava Beskids. On the opposite hill we can see what kind of climb awaits us tomorrow. That’ll be quite the warm-up. There’s a shelter at the pass, so we set our things down there. Jozef pitches the tent and inflates the sleeping pads while I loosen up my feet a bit.

For dinner we have Asian chicken instant noodles, then pasta with tuna, sugo and cheese. We eat at the table like proper people, so meanwhile I post a few videos to Instagram. After sunset birds chirp loudly, and every so often we catch some singing from down in the village. It’s turned cold now, so we brush our teeth and go warm up in the sleeping bags. I’d meant to write too, but my hands are completely numb, and once I’m warm, sleep really pulls at me, so I leave it for tomorrow. As I’m dozing off, I suddenly hear a big noise in the forest and cracking branches. That really sounds like a bear. For a second fear grips me, but then I rationalize it, probably not here to eat me. Likely, once it senses us, it’ll head off another way. And that’s exactly what happened, within a few seconds I heard the cracking sounds moving further away. I don’t have the energy to think about it any further and fall asleep.

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