Dong Van is a small market town in the far north of Vietnam, close to the Chinese border, and it lies at the heart of a remarkable landscape of limestone. The Dong Van Karst Plateau, a UNESCO Global Geopark, is a high, rocky country of grey peaks, deep gorges and tiny terraced fields, where farmers grow maize and buckwheat in pockets of soil carried by hand and planted between the rocks. At around a thousand metres, the air is cool, mist hangs in the valleys, and the villages are built of stone, with walls and roofs of rough grey slabs.
The old quarter of the town has a row of low, tile-roofed houses from the French colonial period, with a market that fills on Sunday mornings with people from the surrounding hills. The Hmong, Dao, Lolo and Tay minorities come in their traditional dress, in bright embroidery and silver, to trade livestock, vegetables, spices and homemade corn liquor. It is a lively, colourful and slightly chaotic scene, and the steaming pots of noodles and the smoke from grills make it a good place for breakfast. A short way south, in Sa Phin, a mansion built by a Hmong chieftain in the early twentieth century is a fascinating relic.
The road you are riding, the Ha Giang loop, is one of the great motorcycle journeys of Southeast Asia. Between Dong Van and Meo Vac runs the Ma Pi Leng Pass, a narrow road carved along a cliff above the Nho Que River gorge, which lies hundreds of metres below in a deep green ribbon. Hmong workers built it by hand in the 1960s over several years, and it is sometimes called the Happiness Road. The views are tremendous, but the road is steep, narrow and often foggy, with trucks and buses on the bends, so ride slowly and keep right.
Fuel is available in town, though stations in the hills are small and supplies can run short, so fill up whenever you can. The nights are cold, and the best time to visit is autumn, when the buckwheat flowers cover the fields with pink, or spring. Rain turns the roads slick, and landslides are common in the wet season. Many travellers hire a local rider to guide them, which is a sensible choice if you are unfamiliar with the roads. A bowl of hot noodles and a cup of strong coffee at dawn is a good way to begin.