Vietnam is changing fast! In particular when it comes to infrastructure. One day Sebastian and I were standing admiring the view, when suddenly we heard a loud blast. On the other side of the valley - kilometers away - we could see smoke, and part of the mountain side tear away. A bit of road widening going on. Later in the day we happened to pass the blast area, and several bulldozers and diggers were busy loading rocks and stones onto huge trucks. We had to wait for about an hour while they cleared a path. It was incredible to see how adept the earthmoving equipment operators were at loading, and clearing the road. The machines almost seemed an extension of their limbs and mind. I have never seen such artistry elsewhere in road building! The process of laying the surface is otherwise pretty labor intensive. Some equipment is used for the roads where tar is required, but the single tracked concrete roads are done entirely manually. Mixing cement by hand in wheelbarrows, and laying one slab at a time. The traffic on these roads is minimal, and I suspect the roads - once laid - will last for many years to come, with no repairs required.

Both Seb and I needed oil changes on our bikes. Style Motorbikes that we both rented our bikes from, has an office in Ha Giang and we booked into a hotel there for 2 nights. The oil changes, chain adjustments and lubrication were quickly handled, and we used the following couple of days to check out some of the small tracks and roads around Ha Giang. Northern Vietnam really is a biker's paradise. Very little traffic - once you are off the beaten track - limestone or karst mountains in every direction, jungle, rice paddies, water buffaloes, friendly village people waving at you. Sometimes you can drive for hours without seeing anyone - man or machine. It feels remote, but not as remote as the central part of the Ho Chi Minh Road. If you were to stop your bike on the HCMR, park up, step one meter from the road into the jungle, you would be totally invisible, gone to the world. A scary experience. No wonder the American soldiers were terrified to become part of the war. They simply couldn't see their enemy.

Here is a quote from author Michael Lee Lanning, to put The American War (as the Vietnamese call it) into perspective: 

From 1959 to 1975, more than 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam. 
Over 58.000 died; 300.000 were wounded; 2.436 remain missing in action.

It was the first war in US history that was recorded as a defeat.

The enemy was a determined one; neither time nor the catastrophic loss of over 600.000 dead - the equivalent of the United States losing ten million - deterred him from fighting on.

Both Sebastian and I will be sad to leave Ha Giang, but we have decided to make our way towards SaPa a bit further southwest.