We work with journalists, travel writers, photographers and documentary crews coming to the northern highlands. This page is for them.
What we can help with
- Road and season information. The real state of the routes, when landslides happen, when the flowers and the rice come, which day each market is held. We answer from what our team has just ridden, not from a brochure.
- Border-area procedures. Many of the places worth seeing lie inside the border belt and require advance registration. We explain the process and handle it for a crew when authorised to do so.
- Fixers and interpreters, including Hmong and Tay interpreters for places where Vietnamese is not enough.
- Vehicles. Motorcycles, a support vehicle, and drivers for a filming crew.
- Introductions to local people — only where we have asked first and they have agreed. We do not bring journalists to someone’s house without the household knowing.
What we will not do
We do not stage scenes, hire people to wear ethnic dress for a photograph, arrange a “ceremony” outside its real occasion, or accept requests to film children at school or at home without the family’s consent. If your story needs those things, we are not the right partner.
We also do not trade coverage for free trips. If we contribute to the cost of a research trip, that has to be disclosed in the piece — it is ordinary professional practice, and we would rather not be the reason anyone breaks it.
Lead time
For a standard article: two weeks. For a crew needing border-zone permits: four weeks minimum, and longer for some areas. During the high season (September to December, and the spring festival period) please come to us earlier still.
Material
We hold high-resolution images of the roads, our fleet and our operations, available for use with credit and licensing details. Portraits of local people are supplied only where the person in the photograph has agreed to press use.
Contact
Write to info@hagiangexperts.com with “PRESS” at the start of the subject line. Tell us the publication, the subject, your timeline and what you need from us. We reply within three working days.
Where we have appeared
The international coverage below concerns trips organised by our founding team. The copies kept on this site are for reference only; the originals and their copyright belong to the publishers.
- Nikkei Asia — From Tibet to PNG, touring Asia-Pacific on two wheels. Copy on this site · Read the original at Nikkei Asia
- South China Morning Post — Riding the wind, by Ian Lloyd Neubauer. Copy on this site · Read the original at the SCMP
If you are a journalist and have published something that mentions us, send us the link at info@hagiangexperts.com and we will add it here.