I would like to start off this post by apologizing to my mother, who would have had a heart attack and major anxiety if she knew how I have been getting around Vietnam the last 3 weeks.

Surprise it was by motorbike.  The alternative means of transportation mentioned in previous blog posts was something that I didn’t even know was a thing in Vietnam.  Apparently the Honda Winn 110cc motorbike is famous in Vietnam for backpackers to ride South to North or north to south from Saigon to Hanoi or somewhere in between.  Vietnam is built on motorbikes and so the infrastructure is all built to accommodate them.  All of the hostels have space to park them and the roads are designed with motorbikes in mind.  The family vehicle is a motorbike in most cases.  It’s not uncommon to see a family of 4 on a motorbike going about their lives (no car seats though)

When I arrived in Saigon, I quickly realized that the Tet holiday would make the transportation aspect of my trip, very stressful and difficult and so I was willing to think about all options.  The second night of my trip in a new hostel I had moved to, there were 3 people talking about their transportation woes and were thinking they might buy bikes and ride the over 2000km to Hanoi.  The closest thing I have ever ridden to a motorbike was the electric scooters in San Francisco that litter the city (it’s actually a great service and I used it a lot) so was not too sure about getting a fully manual bike.  Frankly, I was nervous as hell to drive a bike for that long in a foreign country where I wasn’t really sure of the traffic patterns etc.  One of the things that made me feel a bit better about the situation is that the one sister had also never ridden a bike before either, so there would be two newbies and two experienced riders in our crew.  The two experienced people started combing the facebook groups and craigslist ads for bikes as backpackers are constantly buying and selling bikes at various points between Hanoi and Saigon.  I am sure many of these bikes have gone back and forth 10’s if not 100’s of times.  The major issue is that these bikes are constantly breaking down and there is always a worry that something will happen in the middle of nowhere.  The two then went off to look at a few bike option they had found.  By the end of the day there were three bikes purchased and mine was the last one left.

While the others were looking into buying bikes, I did a bit of research on rentals and ended up finding Dragon bikes, which specialize in cross country rentals.  Patrick is originally from conneticut and was super chill.  It was $144 for a 21 day rental of a Honda Blade 110cc semi automatic bike with 3000km on it (aka it has made one trip from Hanoi to Saigon).  The price was a bit higher, but the peace of mind that this deal would provide was well worth the extra money.  I was also fairly confident that I was not going to have to worry about break downs during the trip.

When everything shook out, we ended up with the two experienced riders buying used bikes and the two inexperienced riders renting from Dragon Bikes (We ended up taking one of the bikes back, as after riding it from the shop to the hostel, a few problems were identified).  And with that we had 4 bikes and a rough plan on how we would get to Hanoi.  There is an excellent resource online called Vietnam Coracle and he outlines all there is to know about riding a motorbike in Vietnam as well as many route options and places to stay, etc.  We planned on roughly trying to stay to his routes in order to efficiently combine, a beautiful ride while still being able to spend some time in some of the cities along the way.

Thoughts and experiences I had when riding a bike in Vietnam.

• There are motorbikes EVERYWHERE

• I’ve seen all sorts of livestock being transported on motorbike.  A pig was in a specialty made cage, there were about 30 chickens in their special cage and I have also seen multiple dogs and even a goat on a bike.  The one time I was driving behind the pig, it decided that it was time to poop and if I had been any closer to the guy, I would have been in for a nasty surprise.
• There are a ton of childrens shoes and hats on the road.  For most people, the family vehicle is a motorbike, so it is not uncommon to see a family of 4 riding on a motorbike.  If the child is small enough, they sit on the bike being held by the parent so their feet just dangle and they may not be old enough to be able to keep the shoes on their feet.  Therefore the roads are littered with small pairs of shoes and sandles that have fallen off of kids feet while on a motorbike.
• Roads can go from beautifully paved to really narrow and crappy in a matter of seconds.  I am not sure how the road systems work, but it may be based on the city or town.  The roads can change dramatically even though it is technically the same road number.  A lot of the roads are beautiful but some of them are a crumbling mess.

• Cows, Goats, chickens, pigs and dogs are a very common occurance on the side of the road.  I am not sure what the ownership structure is for these animals, but they appear to just wander where they please.  I understand there are some wild animals but due to the value attributed to animals like cows, I would assume someone would not let them go free like that.  Anyways, there is also poop everywhere on the roads too.
• There are very localized shops on the road as you go from town to town.  One stretch of road had 2-3km of shops selling rice wine with snakes in it, another stretch had this yellow liquid in re-purposed bottles and another still had people selling Guavas.  I found out later that the yellow liquid was a oil extracted from a local tree that pregnant ladies like to rub into their skin.  I stopped to take a picture but didn’t really see the need to buy skin oil…. I did however stop and have a guava, although at the time I had no idea what I was eating.  I also saw special cakes and some fermented meat called Nem Chua which I did stop and get.  It was interesting to say the least.

• People were incredibly friendly in the smaller towns who are not used to foreigners.  People would say hello to us and ask for photos.  It was crazy how nice and welcoming everyone was to foreigners.  This contrasts heavily with the tourist areas where everyone sees the tourists as walking money banks.

After having dropped my bike off and being safe and sound on the other end, there were a lot of travelers throughout the journey that had had at least one accident with scraps and scabs to prove it.  We also heard plenty of stories of police, pulling over foreigners and asking for as much as 3 million dong or they would take the bike.  I had a “riding” wallet which never had more than 300,000 in it so that if we did get pulled over, I wouldn’t have to shell out a large amount.  Technically riding without an international drivers license is illegal in Vietnam, but the police are only looking for bribes and you will never have any major trouble.  I want to thank the Rad Motorbike crew for randomly being assigned to my hostel room and deciding to take off on this major adventure together.  3/4 of us made it to Hanoi with Matteo heading west to Laos without coming to Hanoi first.  After we left Hue, I joined up with Audrey and Scotty who had basically the exact riding itinerary as me, so we ended up riding the rest of the way together, which meant I only rode alone on one riding day.

I left out a few things from some of my other posts, because I did not want to mother to know I was motorbiking until I was safely on the other end, so I will be writing a round 2 post which breaks down the journey a little bit and outlines some of the cool experiences we had along the way.

Also… thanks for the banana dad, it for sure came in handy.