The Happiness Road from Ha Giang up to Dong Van: Quan Ba heaven's gate, the Hmong king's mansion, the Ma Pi Leng pass and a boat into the Tu San gorge.
Photo: ruben snuverink / Unsplash
Day 1
The group flies from Da Nang to Noi Bai in the morning, then drives north-west towards Ha Giang with a rest stop in Tuyen Quang. We reach Ha Giang city in the late afternoon and check in. Before dinner we stop at the Km0 marker of the Happiness Road, the start of a route that volunteer youth brigades from six northern provinces cut by hand.
Day 2
An early start onto the karst plateau. The first stop is Quan Ba heaven's gate at 1,500 metres, looking down on Tam Son town and the Twin Mountains. The road continues through the pine forest of Yen Minh and up the Tham Ma switchbacks to Sa Phin, site of the Vuong family mansion — the home of the Hmong king Vuong Chinh Duc, built over eight years in green stone and ironwood on a Chinese plan. In the late afternoon we reach the old quarter of Dong Van, a street of rammed-earth houses under yin-yang tiled roofs, and stop for tea at the Old Quarter café.
Day 3
The morning is spent at the Lung Cu flag tower on Dragon Mountain, more than 800 steps up, with the two 'dragon's eye' pools visible in the village below. After lunch the coach crosses the Ma Pi Leng pass, some 20 kilometres carved along a cliff face, stopping at the Death Rock viewpoint and the Volunteer Youth memorial. From Ta Lang landing you board a boat on the jade-green Nho Que River and pass through the Tu San gorge, walls close to 800 metres high and the deepest gorge in Southeast Asia. We stay the night in Dong Van or Meo Vac.
Day 4
We check out and return by the same road, stopping for mint honey, Shan Tuyet tea and leaf-yeast corn wine. We reach Hanoi in the early afternoon and transfer straight to Noi Bai Airport for the flight back to Da Nang, where the programme ends.
Ha Giang is a trip where the road matters as much as the destinations. Most of the four days is spent in a vehicle following a cliff edge, and that is exactly what you are paying to see: a stone plateau running to the horizon, maize planted on slopes too steep to stand on, and the Happiness Road that thousands of volunteers cut with hammers and crowbars between 1959 and 1965.
We use a smaller vehicle than usual on this route. The road up to Dong Van has tight hairpins and stretches barely a lane wide; a full-size coach is both slower and unable to pull over at the best viewpoints. We also leave early each morning, because after ten o’clock the cloud usually rises and fills the valleys.
This trip suits travellers who cope well with long drives and winding roads. Buckwheat flowers are out around October and November, plum and peach blossom around February and March. If you want a specific season, tell us early — Dong Van has very few hotel rooms and they go quickly. Group size and accommodation standard are agreed before the contract is signed.
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