The plan on the wheels
G and I decided there was no better way to spend a month in the summer than tackling Vietnam. While there are probably “better” ways to spend a holiday, we wanted the chaos of Southeast Asia from the seat of a motorcycle.
We looked into it and went with the most common workhorse in the country: the Honda Blade 110cc. It’s a semi-automatic (not the most powerful machine) but more than enough for what we wanted to achieve. We were not planning to go too fast. The idea was to just keep on moving and stay alive, especially since neither of us had a proper bike license. We chose to travel only with 30L backpacks, that’s enough for hot summer in Vietnam.
The idea is to start in Saigon, head north to Hanoi, and then push further into the northern mountains before looping back to Hanoi to finish. We have 3.5 weeks to cover the length of the country and whatever else we can manage in between.
During the first days in Ho Chi Minh, aka Saigon, we didn’t do much. We just wanted to see what’s happening in the city, chill a little bit, and make sure the bikes were ready for the road. Did we fall for local scams? Absolutely. Even though I thought I wouldn’t, we did. A guy showed us how he carried his heavy loads of coconuts and asked if we wanted to try carrying them. Of course, it seemed funny, so I said yes. All of a sudden, I’m standing there carrying the coconuts, and before I know it, he’s hacking them open and handing us the drinks. He charged us $2 each which isn’t a lot of money but later we googled that this is a common scam.
Me being a victim of a scam
Finding a place in Saigon that wasn’t too touristy was more complicated than we expected. We ended up walking for over an hour just to find the right spot. After the morning coconut incident, we were staying extremely alert, don’t fall for the scams, guys.
People just hanging out on the streets playing “foot badminton”
First days on the road
Everyone has heard about the reality of driving in Vietnam. The truth is, you are basically nothing on the road and have to look out for everything. The traffic is chaotic: people drive against the flow of traffic, and if a bus is overtaking a car, they won’t stop for you. As a motorbike, you have to pull over to the side because they simply will not let you pass. Basically, if you assume everyone is going to hit you and you’re going to die, you become extra cautious. It sounds dark, but it gives you a much better chance of surviving. ;)))
We actually rented our bikes from an American guy who has been living in Vietnam for over 20 years. I was surprised to hear him speak to his Vietnamese kids in French, not exactly what you expect to hear in the middle of Saigon. To make matters more interesting, I realized my bike’s speedometer didn’t work. I was only 3 km away from his place, but I chose not to turn around. This was only my second time ever on a bike, the first time was in Bali back in 2018, but the traffic there was nowhere near this hectic.
They say fortune favors the bold, but there is a fine line between being brave and being stupid. At that moment, I think we were still on the brave side.
Leaving Saigon, we thought it was a good idea to wear shorts. It wasn’t. Within a few hours, I was so badly sunburnt that I felt it for the next several days. After that, the strategy changed, basically you cover everything. So we moved away from shorts and started wearing long pants. The face mask served two purposes, keeping my skin from frying and stopping me from inhaling the constant fumes from the sea of vehicles around us.
Even the gear was struggling with the temperature. We had phone holders for navigation but the phones would get too hot. We ended up having to cover the phones with spare face masks too, using the lighter colors to reflect the heat back and keep the maps running.
Strategy
We didn’t have much of a strategy. We planned for about 4- 5 hours of actual riding per day, broken up by frequent stops since the seats were far from comfortable. Basically, we’d stop every hour for some bubble tea or snacks.
I think I consumed about 50 bubble teas in that single month. I went into this thinking Vietnam would be a great weight loss program, but with that much sugar, it definitely wasn’t.
Our accommodation plan was just as loose. We would roll into a small town or village and search Google Maps for a “Nhà Nghỉ” (guesthouse). You have to search in Vietnamese to find the local spots. If we saw at least 1 review, we’d just show up. You never knew exactly what you were going to get, and since we couldn’t really be picky, we stayed in whatever was available. Any place with a bed was fine.
Accommodation could look like this
We followed the same strategy for food. Basically, you just look for what might sound appealing and hope for the best. Since we weren’t in the major towns, we couldn’t really rely on Google Maps to find “top-rated” spots. Instead, we just looked for where the locals were gathered or where the steam from a broth pot looked promising. It was the same as the guesthouses, we’d pull up to a spot, see what they were serving, and eat. Not being in the tourist areas meant we were eating whatever was local to that specific village. It was simple and it worked.
A food spot could look like this, since we weren’t going to touristy spots, the locals were always excited to see us and would bring their families over. In this particular case, they brought us an extra bag of lychees. The kid of the owner, an 8 year old boy, showed up and with all the bravery in his heart said, “Do you like this woman?” while pointing to a woman sitting close to G.
We tried not to ride in the rain or the dark. It started raining so fast that we were soaked in about 5 minutes, so we chose to stop in a shack close by to get a drink. Being careless, I just chose any drink. I was suspicious of why it had a proper supersport motorcycle logo on it. It turns out it had 5 times the amount of caffeine you would get in a normal Red Bull. Be careful, kids, don’t make the mistake I did. I’m happy I noticed it after a few sips, or it would have been a pretty sleepless night.
New experiences
The first days we still had to get a hang of how everything was going to be. It’s fun to not know where you’re going to sleep, but if you are in an area that has no accommodations for hours ahead on the road, that’s scary. We found an establishment on Google Maps that had 2 buildings, a mini shop on the left and allegedly a place to crash on the right. When we arrived, there were about 40 people on the left and a birthday party happening. We were immediately invited in, and having two white boys in a random village in Vietnam made the locals go crazy.
Did I mention it was a karaoke party?
The locals kept on insisting we could not leave (meaning we couldn’t go to our accommodation on the side of the road) until we finished the box of beer. Of course, we were drinking their local liquor and eating too. At some points, I was given a beer, then a shot, and insisted on eating whatever they were putting on my plate while taking various pictures. Nobody spoke English, though maybe one guy knew 20 words, we made it work anyway. After the party, the locals all left on scooters with families of 4 or 5 people on a single bike.
The hangover the next morning was definitely not my best memory. To make matters worse, I got my first flat tire on day 3. Of course, with the Honda Blade being literally the most popular bike in Vietnam ever, changing a tire is doable anywhere. It cost me 3 bucks, including tips.
The daily rhythm
For the next days, we just kept on riding and making a plan day by day. We covered around 200 km per day, driving for 4 to 5 hours with many stops through the day for bubble tea, lunch, food, or whatever caught our attention.
Naturally, we tried to mix some rural riding with a proper town stop every few days. Rural is fun and amazing, but very basic. You don’t choose what you eat, you just look for any place that serves food and eat it. There is no way to be vegetarian or vegan for that matter. Sometimes you get some pho, sometimes it’s chicken and rice, and sometimes I’m not even aware of what I am eating.
At the same time, the activities we enjoyed were just things that were happening in the moment, whether it was a football match in a village we were passing or a nicer meal. It was a lot of card playing and drinking beer.
oops
$4 per person accommodation, the bathroom did not work so we had to use the bucket to flush it down
Local entertainment options
Average local food establishment
Additional randomness of Vietnam
This section covers some extra parts from Vietnam I want to share but don’t have enough for a whole paragraph.
First off, a duck stop, some folks with a super entrepreneurial mindset opened a place where you can play with and feed ducks. Apart from the ducks, it’s just a local farm.
We were asked to take a picture with them, fun for both parties
Traffic participants
If locals insist, you must drink, saying no 10 times doesn’t do much, and (again) – we were asked whether we would be interested in marrying a single local mom
Here, we were livestreamed on Facebook as the cafe is not used to seeing whiteys
She helped us getting some proper rain gear before heading into the mountains and wanted to snatch a picture together, the plastic stool was mandatory I guess
The North
Heading up north in Vietnam shows a completely different scenery. You actually climb up to 2,000 m and higher, so the temperature drops. For example, staying there was the only night during the trip when I had to wear a sweater in the evening as it was like 15 C .
Getting to the Ha Giang Loop (the famous route in the north, especially for motorbiking) is kind of complicated without a proper driver’s license. Apparently, someone died a few years ago before we went there, so cops were waiting at some of the main road entrance points and stopping everybody. If you get caught by a cop, you don’t just pay a fine but your bike gets impounded which is a big no-go. We had to act smart, so we woke up at 5 AM and passed them. Wow, so smart.
If you commit to a trip like this, make sure you check questionable routes more carefully. We didn’t, and in the north, we ended up on an “amazing” route that was basically all sand. It included crossing a river on a bamboo platform and then pushing the bikes up a 25% incline.
It wasn’t just pushing, though, we actually went the wrong way and had to turn the bikes around at that incline on sand, all on a pathway that was less than 1 meter wide.
Recommendations and spending
I would say a trip like this is recommended for someone who has traveled some prior and is interested in new ways of exploring. You still go through main cities and tourist attractions, but in between, you fill the gaps with local, rural, and raw experiences you cannot plan ahead. A little bit of risk tolerance is required given the traffic situation in Vietnam. Overall, good problem-solving always goes hand in hand with trips like these, you will end up trying to solve something where nobody speaks English and have to use hand gestures.
Oh, by the way, the Vietnamese love karaoke and pool. We were playing a lot of pool when it was too hot in the middle of the day. It made a great stop when we wanted to chill in between riding sections throughout a day.
We ended up covering 3,716km / 2,309m on a motorbike. A month in Vietnam cost us 1,100 EUR. That covered everything, bike rental (about 6 EUR per day), gas, maintenance, accommodation, food and fun. Of course, it depends on where you are flying from, as those extra costs for flights can be substantial. But once you’re on the ground, your biggest expenses are just the daily rhythm of the road.
If you had read until here, you deserve to know that I got a second flat in the north
