November 7th: Climbing Day 1 in Huu Lung
Day 25
Finally our first climbing day! Huu Lung is a newly developed area with the potential for much more. However, as we were told and found out for ourselves now, it’s not the most conveniently located. The climbing area is on the way to Yen Thinh, a little town in the middle of mountains. The crag is about 12.5 km / 7.8 miles from the nearest group of hotels on the AH1.
Arriving late in the morning a group of locals directed where to park our trikes and even showed us the path through the orchard to the base of the crag. After only two warm-up climbs the landowner appeared and not even waiting for me to stop belaying, demanded payment. After Cher safely anchored in and began to abseil, I started the negotiation. We had been warned that the land use fee was 200,000VND for a large group, and since we are only 2, we should bargain.
I indicated that we would be there for 7 or more days and the price she insisted on (200,000VND per day, roughly 10USD) wasn’t only for 2 climbers. In response she gestured to her trees, several of which had been cut down or damaged by climbers lowering off into the branches. counter gestured that there were only 2 of us and she lowered the price to 150,000VND. It was still excessive I since we were only paying 200,000VND for a hotel with air-conditioning, internet and hot showers.
Cher descended and with the help of a Vietnamese dictionary and a note book communicated the same. While writing 20,000VND down on our note book, the landowner refused to take our 20,000VND bill and started to add 2 more zeros to bring the amount to an absurd 2,000,000VND. Then we realized that she probably is not so well educated. While still on good terms we politely refused, packed our things and left.
Earlier we met a young girl who accompanied us to the crag who spoke some English. We had her Facebook and sent her a message. A year ago we paid 50,000 VND for land usage at Butterfly Valley on Cat Ba Island, and that was a very well developed crag with more than 50 routes. The area is also very touristy with plenty of accommodations, restaurants and sight seeing. Hopefully the land owner will learn that if she charged a lower price we would come for more days, and she might get more than 200,000VND that she insisted at the first place. All we could do now was wait.