vietnam motorbike tour

In Uncategorized on 1 July 2009 with 1 comment

the motor­cycle diaries …

my trip from ho chi minh city in south­ern viet­nam, along the cent­ral viet­nam coast­line, west into laos from vien­tianne to luang pra­bang, then east back into viet­nam, fin­ish­ing in hanoi.

the prot­ag­on­ist:

boris the bul­let­dodger … a 1974 rus­sian (belarus) minsk. dark blue, single cyl­in­der, 125cc motorcycle.

day 1 (day 124 of my travels) — today i woke up early, ready for my big start. i checked out and lugged all my gear down to where my bike was stored. i dumped my bag and got some break­fast. after­wards, i packed my bag onto my bike. the motor­cycle taxi driver had been really help­ful and friendly, so i offered him some busi­ness. while i had figured out a way of get­ting to the edge of town and to high­way a1 (the national high­way) i guessed that it would be tough going con­sid­er­ing the crazy traffic in ho chi minh city. so i offered him cash if he would lead the way to the edge of town … i even bought him a cof­fee when we reached the road-side store that was right next to the high­way entrance. he was happy, and i’d nav­ig­ated my way through the chaos that is viet­namese roads.

after our cof­fee together, i hit the crowded high­way. even though it’s the high­way, it’s still crowded with cars, trucks and motor­cycles. there are a myriad of small towns and busi­nesses all around the road, mean­ing that people zoom in all dir­ec­tions. there was one good thing, that the high­way had a motor­cycle lane for part of the road away from ho chi minh. it meant that bikes and big­ger vehicles were separated.

on one of these sec­tions of road i nearly had my first acci­dent. a very big truck was cross­ing the bike lane. he pulled straight out onto the lane in front of the motor­cycles. i was at the front and locked up my brakes to stop. the road was gravely (des­pite being paved) and i skid­ded but didn’t stop. the truck, see­ing me skid­ding at speed towards him, braked and stopped. i saw my chance to avoid the acci­dent, gun­ning the bike and going around in front of the truck. so, iron­ic­ally, even though he would have caused the acci­dent, he saved my life by stop­ping. had he kept going, i would have hit the truck and i doubt my $25 hel­met would have done much good — the hel­met is actu­ally wear­ing me for protection.

i got through that little scare and kept going … but it was an exer­cise in how fickle viet­namese roads are — one minute you’re cruis­ing, next minute you’re seconds from death. it also made me real­ise how well i react in emer­gen­cies. i’ve always known i was clear headed in tight situ­ations. i don’t lose my abil­ity to think. things hap­pen slowly and i have time to react. it happened again. things were mov­ing in slow motion and i actu­ally thought to myself “i don’t have time to stop, i’m going to hit him”, before he stopped and left me space to go around. real­ising he’d seen me, and stopped, i gunned the bike (con­trolling the fish­tail caused by the gravel) and sped around the front of him.

i rode for two hours and stopped for fuel and a break. $6 of fuel (and oil mixed in), $2 for a sprite and sand­wich, and i was on my way again. i wanted to make sure i was head­ing in the right dir­ec­tion, and i asked the woman at the café if i was on the way to mui né, she said i was, and i hap­pily kept riding.

when i made the turn to mui né, another two hours later, i stopped too early and hadn’t gone all the way through to the small sea­side town­ship. after a bit of hunt­ing around, i found the right road and even­tu­ally made it to my ocean view guest house.

dur­ing the trip i also had to make two small repairs. the first repair was the handle­bars. for some bizarre reason, the nuts on top of both handle­bars began to shake loose. one dis­ap­peared (lost on the road some­where) and the other stayed on after i hand tightened it a few times). i had to have them replaced. the second prob­lem boris had was the foot brake slipped down when i used it and didn’t recoil to its ori­ginal pos­i­tion. it meant that the brakes were con­stantly (partly) applied. it turned out that this was a small prob­lem too. the spring had snapped and was eas­ily replaced.

when i arrived in mui né, i was sun­burned to hell on my arms and neck (stu­pidly not using sun­screen or a long shirt, as the loc­als do). but i was happy to be there and my sore arse (from rid­ing) was also happy not to be on the bike. i checked in, showered and changed, and had a beer. at din­ner, the one beer turned into five and i got a little drunk to cel­eb­rate my suc­cess­ful first day.

day 2 — i woke up late and decided to aban­don boris for the day. actu­ally, the gear lever is quite stiff and hurts my foot if i ride in san­dals. so i have been rid­ing in my boots. i didn’t want to wear boots today, so i hired a bicycle and cycled 10km into mui né vil­lage. the vil­lage is small and quite beau­ti­ful. i was actu­ally look­ing for a place called fairy stream, which i’d passed quite a way back. so i turned around and rode back to the stream. the stream itself was quite bor­ing (just a shal­low stream of water run­ning next to the huge sand dunes in mui né). i enjoyed walk­ing along it though, let­ting the water run over my feet. how­ever, i was still sore from being sun­burned the day before and decided that i should spend the rest of the day indoors.

the after­noon was spent on the bal­cony look­ing at the ocean, read­ing my guide­book and plan­ning the route to dalat and nha trang, updat­ing my blog, edit­ing a few pho­tos, and chat­ting online. it’s quite nice hav­ing wifi in my room and i’m really amazed how many places in cam­bodia and viet­nam have wifi. it seems to have become a ‘stand­ard’ for tour­ism … which is great for me.

after dark i went for a walk along the beach.

tomor­row i plan to ride to dalat, so i got an early night.

day 3 -  in the morn­ing i packed and checked out of my hotel. i went down to joe’s café again for a cof­fee. i also wanted to drop off some aus­tralian music that i prom­ised i’d give him. after the cof­fee, i hit the road.

i didn’t ride to dalat. on the way i decided to change course and head straight for nha trang. the weather was good, so i just fol­lowed the coast. on the way i stopped for a break at a road­side café. this is off the for­eign tour­ist trail, so they were pretty sur­prised to see me. the girl who served me was fairly young and the boy next to me kept mak­ing fin­ger ges­tures and smil­ing at me. i couldn’t tell whether he was refer­ring to sex (ie hav­ing sex with her) or mar­riage. it was the ‘one fin­ger in a circle, pok­ing the other fin­ger through it’ kind of thing. i played on my ignor­ance and com­mu­nic­a­tion bar­rier to pass the whole issue completely.

later in the same day, i was pro­posi­tioned again. i had lunch at a big res­taur­ant (also for loc­als). the man­ager poin­ted to one of the wait­resses and looked at me. “you want boom boom?” he said … this time there was no mis­tak­ing it. boom boom only means one thing in viet­nam. again, i laughed it off and pre­ten­ded not to under­stand. i was also a little wor­ried that i’d con­tinue to be pro­posi­tioned every­where i went.

i got to nha trang without any more amor­ous offers. it was late in the after­noon and i was tired from the long ride. i had din­ner, some beer, went back to my room and slept.

day 4 - this morn­ing i put boris in for an upgrade. whilst he’s a good bike, i’ve been wish­ing that i could know my speed. yes, that’s right, boris has no speedo­meter (mean­ing, there’s also no trip meter). so for the first few days i was rid­ing without any know­ledge of how fast i was going or how far i’d traveled.

so, for $35 i had a speedo­meter installed, a second mir­ror (right side), i replaced the hand grips (which were old and dis­gust­ing), and i got the mech­anic to check the brakes and engine. pretty good! they did a good job of it too, the speedo­meter and mir­ror were used, but they look fine. the speedo already reads 31,000 kms (not that it matters).

while boris was in the shop, i wandered around town. i had a nice break­fast (eggs and pan­cakes) then walked down along the beach. while i’m enjoy­ing viet­nam a lot (and hav­ing fun rid­ing the bike) i’m not really tak­ing many pho­tos. i’m not bothered by it … i don’t have to take pho­tos every place i go … so i went out with the inten­tion to make an effort. i didn’t get any good shots.

it was hot, so i spent some of the after­noon in my room relax­ing under the air con­di­tioner. after it cooled down, i headed out again and picked up boris. i also bought a pair of surf shorts at one of the stores.

every place in nha trang has happy hour. i ended up at a small bar called the blue dragon. i got 2 for 1 tiger beers, drank them and played some pool with one of the bar girls. she beat me 3–1 (hey, she’s good!!) and sat out­side in the cool night air. another guy, who intro­duced him­self as ‘wassa’ came and sat with us. he was one of the bar’s reg­u­lars, and an aus­sie. so we sat and talked a bit. he’d brought a bottle of wild tur­key and we star­ted drink­ing that.

i had some food, we guzzled the wild tur­key (and beer) and i ordered a bottle of black label jack daniels. we drank half of that too. the bar girl offered to come home with me … for money … but i wasn’t that drunk! we knocked down the whis­key until after 1am. drunk and tired, the bar staff closed their bar and we all walked down to an open air night club. i had another beer there, but it was late and i wanted to sleep. i walked home and crashed.

day 5 — today was another rid­ing day. i packed, had break­fast, checked out and hit the road. i still had a slight head­ache from drink­ing the pre­vi­ous night, but i was actu­ally sur­prised that i felt pretty good.

i hit the high­way and made my way out of town. des­pite the com­plete lack of good road signs, i man­aged to fol­low the right path out of town and all the way back to the national high­way. from there, i fol­lowed the coast north. i planned to stop about 60kms north of nha trang in a small place called doc let. how­ever, i couldn’t see the turn any­where. once i passed the moun­tain ranges, it was too late to go back … so i aban­doned the idea and con­tin­ued north.

i stopped for a break at a beach­side café. the place was quiet and the staff weren’t too inter­ested in doing their work. i had a pepsi, res­ted, and made to leave. on the way out, the secur­ity guy (who was watch­ing my bike) asked me if i wanted to sleep. when i looked at him con­fused, he then made another ges­ture with his fin­gers. boom boom?

dam­nit, not again! i declined, laugh­ing along with their bawdy dir­ect­ness, fired up boris and got the hell out of there.

i for­got to men­tion that it’s much easier for me to keep track of how far i’ve traveled, now that boris has a speedo­meter. how­ever, there’s a small prob­lem — the speedo­meter has a slot that can be used for key start bikes (mine is kick start). so, because the key slot isn’t being used, it’s loose and rattles. the rat­tling noise bugged the hell out of me for the whole day. i’m going to have to glue it shut or something.

later that day i also saw some police­men. i hadn’t really seen any on the first few days, but today i saw police­men three times. the third time i thought they were going to pull me over.  a police­man was stand­ing ahead of me on the road. i kept expect­ing him to wave me over to stop, but i was lucky … they seemed to be more inter­ested in the truck on the side of the road.

dur­ing my second stop for the day, i pulled into a place where i thought they’d just give me a drink and leave me alone … but it was not to be. i sat down and the owner of the small road­side store made me sit with the two girls in the corner. it turns out that they’re from the city i’m headed to — quy nhon — and they’re at the store to sell insur­ance to the owner. so, the four of us sat and i drank water while they all chattered in vietnamese.

then the owner points to the girl next to me … here it comes … and says ‘she love you’ and starts mak­ing ges­tures with his fin­gers. every­one starts laugh­ing and i laugh with them. i’m start­ing to think that it’s impossible to spend a day in viet­nam without being offered a wife or sex.

after a while, the girls indic­ated that they were leav­ing. they were return­ing to quy nhon and sug­ges­ted that i fol­low them. the owner of the store kept point­ing to the girl (same as before) and sug­gest­ing that she ride on my bike. the two girls got on their bike and we took turns at fol­low­ing each other. this las­ted for about 20kms when we got sep­ar­ated by some traffic. i decided that it was more import­ant for me to reach quy nhon before dark (as opposed to play­ing with two girls who speak zero eng­lish). i picked up the pace and within an hour i had reached town.

i looked around but couldn’t find the hotel i wanted. i stopped in a big upscale hotel and the valet gave me dir­ec­tions to my hotel. i rode along the beach­front and found my hotel in another part of town (more north than most other hotels, which were all filled with locals).

quy nhon isn’t a tour­ist town and it shows. the whole city is full of local tour­ists and the atmo­sphere is very dif­fer­ent. there are no hawkers and touts roam­ing the streets selling crap (like nha trang and sai­gon). there are a few mar­kets, but the loc­als just mingle and browse, without people being too pushy.

my hotel is really nice. it’s run by a kiwi lady and the staff are very friendly. i checked in, ate din­ner, and retired to my room. at 10pm the guy from the front desk knocked on my door. boris’ indic­at­ors (which make a loud beep­ing noise) had been turned on when someone was mov­ing bikes around. rather than turn off the indic­ator, they came and knocked on my door to tell me to fix my bike. idi­ots … how many mil­lions of motor­cycles are there in viet­nam, and they don’t know how to turnoff an indic­ator when it was them who turned it on (acci­dent­ally) in the first place.

i stomped down­stairs, clicked the indic­ator switch to off (very simple to do) and made a big effort of stomp­ing up to my room again. the front desk guy fol­lowed me out, so i took the time to show him how dif­fi­cult it was to turn the indic­at­ors off. idiot …

day 6 — i had break­fast and got going later than i’d hoped. as a res­ult i spent the whole day on the road. i took a few breaks and asked for dir­ec­tions a couple of times to make sure i was on the right path. one of the frus­trat­ing things about viet­nam is a lack of signs. there are signs which say how far it is to upcom­ing des­tin­a­tions, and there’s reg­u­lar posts which give the dis­tance to hanoi. but i didn’t once see a sign that poin­ted to hoi an.

late in the after­noon, just on dusk, i stopped at a junc­tion to check my map. i’d cal­cu­lated that i’d come quite far and too much fur­ther would mean i’d pass hoi an. i still hadn’t seen any signs. i’ve been rid­ing my luck (in both senses of the word) and the junc­tion i’d stopped at turned out to be the turnoff to hoi an (still, no signs though). a guy gave me the dir­ec­tions in broken eng­lish and i man­aged to find my way. the ride to hoi an was after dark and at a few places there were no street­lights. so i got poun­ded in the face by bugs seek­ing out my bike’s headlight.

i arrived in hoi an to dis­cover a beau­ti­ful little town which, although touristy, was very cute and quaint. quite a few places had lan­terns and the main part of hoi an is along the small river­front. i got a room at the second hotel i tried, after rum­bling nois­ily through the small streets.

my room was very nice, so i settled in to the air­con and checked my email. i was tired from the long ride and, after eat­ing, had an early night.

day 7 — i booked onto a trip to the fam­ous my son (pro­nounced mee son) his­tor­ical zone. these ancient ruins (as old as angkor wat) were bombed by amer­ica dur­ing the viet­nam war. but much of the com­plex still remains.  we took the bus out there and i ended up talk­ing with an aus­sie fam­ily who were in viet­nam on vaca­tion (viet­nam is full of aussies!).

after look­ing around for a while, i was soaked com­pletely through with sweat. it was freak­ing hot and we retreated to the bus to get out of the sun. then we went to the boat for the return to hoi an. we ate rice and veget­ables on the boat, then stopped at an island vil­lage that spe­cial­ises in han­di­crafts. they wanted us to buy stuff, but i just lingered out­side in the shade and took a few photos.

we finally returned to hoi an (by boat) and i walked to my hotel. i had a rest and a shower, then just before dusk, i headed out again with my cam­era and tri­pod. i had din­ner and wandered the streets on both sides of the river. i took some pho­tos and went home.

hoi an is def­in­itely one of my favour­ite places in viet­nam.

day 8 — i was a good boy today. i checked out early and hit the high­way. although the trip to danang was short, it was really hot and i was glad to reach town. i found a hotel and checked in. after look­ing around danang for a bit i real­ised the town is a bit of a shi­thole. i could see why the guid­book said that people passed straight through to hue.

i decided to make the most of it. i walked around the centre of town and when i passed by one of the big hotels, i noticed a mas­sage sign out­side. the place looked legit­im­ate (ie, not a front for a sex shop) so i went in for my first mas­sage in viet­nam. the mas­sage was good. the girl was very young (maybe 21 or 22) and i didn’t think she could do a good job, but her fin­gers and hands were like iron and she really pushed my muscles hard. after­wards, des­pite the fact that she spoke no eng­lish, she offered me sex (by way of point­ing to my groin, and then point­ing to her own pel­vis). she was cute as hell, and tempt­ing though it was, i said no. she fin­ished the mas­sage and i left (feel­ing good because the mas­sage was great and i’d res­isted bit­ing the apple).

i grabbed some cold water and drinks on my way back to the hotel, and settled in for an after­noon of avoid­ing the heat and research­ing the next part of my trip.

day 9 - i was very keen to get out of danang, so i got away early. i didn’t even bother hav­ing break­fast … which is amaz­ing for me, because i didn’t have lunch or din­ner the pre­vi­ous day.

i hit the high­way and on the out­skirts of danang i stopped at a small road­side café for a cof­fee.  when i stop, i usu­ally have two motives — one is to get off the bike, rest and get a drink … the other is to check that i’m headed in the right dir­ec­tion. i chose this par­tic­u­lar café because it was right next door to a motor­bike repair shop. boris had lost a screw from the rear lug­gage rack. it was minor, but my pack weighs about 12kg, and i wanted to make sure that there was no risk of fur­ther dam­age or los­ing my bag on bumpy roads. the guy replaced the screw and tightened the other ones. he didn’t charge me for the ser­vice. while doing that, i sat and had a cof­fee. there were about five viet­namese people there and we all ended up hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion. one guy spoke good eng­lish, but we had fun com­mu­nic­at­ing through sign lan­guage and gestures.

the fact that we didn’t speak each oth­ers’ lan­guages actu­ally made the con­ver­sa­tion more inter­est­ing. i explained how crazy viet­namese roads are, by ges­tur­ing with my arms and mak­ing zoom­ing noises. all the viet­namese people were in fits of laughter. we talked about a few other things too, and it didn’t take too long for the con­ver­sa­tion to turn to sex. the mech­anic who’d fixed my bike poin­ted at one of the girls. there were two girls, one older (maybe late 20s) and another who was 5–6 years younger. he’d poin­ted at the older girl and said to me “boom boom”. he ges­tured put­ting his hands together and then made the fin­ger through fin­ger sex ges­ture. every­one laughed as usual, and i (also as usual) pre­ten­ded not to under­stand. what wor­ried me most is that the girl he’d poin­ted to looked will­ing to do any­thing. she’d already com­mu­nic­ated (through the guy who spoke good eng­lish) that she thought i was handsome.

the next offer was that the mech­anic sug­ges­ted the girl might come with me to hue. i tried to explain that my bike has no pegs for a pas­sen­ger (which is true) but the mech­anic wasn’t fazed … he demon­strated that the girl could put her legs around my waist and ride all the way to hue like that. every­one laughed again, but i was becom­ing wor­ried that they were ser­i­ous. we talked a little more, i fin­ished my cof­fee and i made to leave. when i tried to grab my bag, the girl grabbed it too and didn’t want to let me leave. we all laughed again and (reluct­antly) she let me go. i said good­bye to the jovial crowd that had gathered to see the for­eigner, jumped on boris and made my escape!

the ride to hue is eas­ily one of the coolest things i’ve ever done. not long after leav­ing danang, i hit the coast and up through the moun­tains. this road is quite fam­ous and is called hai van moun­tain pass.

the wind­ing road up and down the moun­tain passed along the coast­line. the view of the bays below and cit­ies in the dis­tance was incred­ible. i stopped once to take pho­tos, but (like much of viet­nam) i’ve just been enjoy­ing the ride … so i haven’t taken as many pho­tos as i might.

boris, i’ve dis­covered, doesn’t like moun­tains. hahahaha … mostly he’s ok, but some­times he gets slug­gish. i usu­ally cruise in 3rd gear, but occa­sion­ally even drop­ping back to second to pick up the revs doesn’t work. i stopped the bike once, put­ting boris into first, and start­ing again just to get the revs up. he’s an old bike, so this is to be expec­ted. mostly, though, boris handled it well enough (if not speedy) and i really had fun rid­ing up and down the wind­ing roads. a lot of the switch­backs were really tight and once i even over­took a truck on the inside, down a hair­pin corner … it was quite exhil­ar­at­ing. i didn’t go fast though, and nobody else was either, but the trucks were incred­ibly slow and i had to pass a few of them.

on the way down i was a little wor­ried about boris’ brakes over­heat­ing. he’s only got old drum brakes and too much use would pos­sibly cause prob­lems on the long down­hill run. so i took it easy and we got through just fine.

the rest of the ride to hue was pretty typ­ical and i arrived just after lunch. i got to my hotel and, because i was starving, imme­di­ately headed down for food. i had 2 beers, a ham­burger and chips … then, feel­ing lazy, i headed to my room to enjoy the air­con and watch movies on my ipod. in the after­noon i went out for a short walk and ate din­ner. i spent about an hour look­ing at my guide and plan­ning things to do the next day, as well as con­sid­er­ing the path i’d take west into laos. i dis­covered that the plain of jars is not actu­ally north of luang pra­bang (as i thought it was) but east. that means i can pass through the area and stop there on my way back towards viet­nam. i also decided not to go south to vinh, but north (stay­ing in laos a little longer) and doing the jump straight to hanoi from the border.

happy with my dis­cov­er­ies and decisions, i returned to my room to read more and sleep.

day 10 — i star­ted the day with a cycle rick­shaw tour of hue cit­adel. the cit­adel itself is pretty cool. we rode in through the arch­way and i dis­covered that half the cit­adel is a func­tional town, mostly full of res­taur­ants, gues­t­houses and motor­cycle repair shops. there were also a num­ber of souvenir stores. we passed those and con­tin­ued on to the old area and the centre of the cit­adel. i got off the rick­shaw and walked around the main palace build­ings, tak­ing pho­tos along the way. it was really nice, but really hot. so i fin­ished the tour and headed back to the rick­shaw. the driver was keen to take my money and depart, so i had him drive me back to the main street near my guesthouse.

walk­ing down the street i decided to see if there was a motor­cycle nearby. i wanted to get a set of pil­lion pegs for boris, in case i wanted to carry a pas­sen­ger. it seems silly, but a few times there were people thumb­ing it on the side of the road. i prob­ably could have given someone a lift to wherever they were going.

i couldn’t find a motor­cycle shop, but i did spot another minsk. this one was bright red with yel­low stars on the main body parts (resem­bling a motor­ised ver­sion of the viet­nam flag). it looked pretty cool and the viet­namese owner asked if i wanted to rent it. i declined and wandered back towards my guesthouse.

i’ve been feel­ing lazy lately, partly due to the heat and partly due to the fact that i haven’t felt like tak­ing pho­tos. so i decided to kick back in my hotel room and relax. i found some wifi and checked email, then after din­ner watched tv and slept.

day 11 — in the morn­ing i checked out and headed for lao bao. it’s the bor­der cross­ing between viet­nam and laos. on the way i rode through some really nice moun­tain roads. the area had much less traffic (being off the national high­way) and was much more scenic. i rode through the small town of khe sanh, made fam­ous in the cold chisel song and the huge seige amer­ica had against the north viet­namese forces. actu­ally, i don’t know why khe sanh is so fam­ous to aus­trali­ans (aside from the song) because as far as i’m aware, we played vir­tu­ally no part in the battles there.

any­way, the town itself was small and i decided not to visit the bat­tle­field (now a tour­ist site and monu­ment). i’ve never liked war memori­als and such, so i con­tin­ued to the border.

i cal­cu­lated that it would be almost impossible to reach savan­nahkhet (laos) from hue in a day, so i got a hotel at the bor­der and decided to make the jump early next morn­ing. that would give me the full day to reach savan­nahkhet and the mekong river. lao bao was a small town with not much to do. i found a mar­ket­place full of illegal import goods (being right on the bor­der). i wandered around the mar­ket for a while and looked at what was on offer. being the only for­eigner, i was quite an attrac­tion, but i mostly ignored it and enjoyed the stinky, raucus mar­ket atmo­sphere. i had a cof­fee at a nearby café and went back to my hotel for the evening.

day 12 — i was excited to get going and start my day. today i would cross the bor­der to laos. i packed, checked out, got on my bike and rode one kilo­meter to the bor­der check point. i arrived, parked the bike and went inside to get my exit stamp.

this is where things star­ted going ter­ribly wrong. the immig­ra­tion offi­cial spot­ted my bike. whilst i’m 100% pos­it­ive that there are no restric­tions on rid­ing a bike across the bor­der, he told me that i needed a per­mit. i tried to con­vince him to let me cross, and short of brib­ing him (which i don’t feel con­fid­ent enough to do), i tried everything i could to get through. how­ever, he was insist­ent and very officious.

swear­ing at him under my breath, i had no choice but to mount up and ride back. i headed into town and went to the immig­ra­tion office. they were help­ful, but use­less. how­ever they did say that i could get a per­mit in dong ha, about 80kms away. it was on the coast, just north of hue. so i took the punt and headed back through khe sanh and towards dong ha. i figured that i had two options — get the per­mit in dong ha or ride north from there towards hanoi. either way, i had to get to the coast and see how it panned out.

i arrived in dong ha and found the trans­port office. they were also help­ful but said there was no such per­mit. they under­stood that i needed some kind of formal paper to get my bike across the bor­der, but they didn’t have any­thing they could give me. one of the officers took me down the road to the cus­toms office and explained the situ­ation to them. he figured they might be able to give me an entry/exit per­mit for the bike. the cus­toms offi­cials were also unhelp­ful and i left empty handed.

angry and frus­trated at viet­namese bur­eau­cracy, i got on the bike and headed north towards vinh. i needed time to think and did that on the road. i had no choice but to keep going north and i was con­sid­er­ing whether to ride to another bor­der cross­ing and try my luck again. i rode as far as cam la and, tired as hell, got a hotel room. i had din­ner across the street (to the amuse­ment of the loc­als who rarely see a for­eigner off the tour­ist trail), and went back to my room to crash.

day 13 — i got star­ted early because, regard­less of my dir­ec­tion i had a long day ahead of me. as i rode out of town i con­sidered whether i would try for the next bor­der. it was west of vinh and, if i found the turn off, was only about 20kms away.

i kept rid­ing and when i reached the turnoff to vinh (the high­way bypassed the city) i real­ised i’d missed the turn off to the bor­der. there had been no signs and no dir­ec­tions to the towns which lay to the west (in the border’s dir­ec­tion). still feel­ing frus­trated, i gave up and gunned it, tak­ing the bike past vinh and mak­ing the run to hanoi.

i stopped for a break and had lunch at a lonely look­ing res­taur­ant. the food turned out to be really great and i enjoyed quite a feast. the fam­ily run­ning the res­taur­ant came and talked with me while i ate. they thought it was enter­tain­ing that i was trav­el­ing to hanoi. i gave them some nepalese money that i had left over and in return they gave me a viet­namese cof­fee drip cup (which i was going to buy any­way, so i was happy to get one for free). they had two girls in the res­taur­ant, both of whom were not their daugh­ters but cous­ins. one was 17 and the other was 19. the 19 year old spoke a little eng­lish. i showed them travel pho­tos on my ipod and we all laughed as i explained my thoughts on viet­namese roads and my travels so far. then, just when i thought i’d escaped the whole “do you need a woman?” issue, the old man (their uncle, i think) offered me the girls. he was sug­gest­ing that one of them could come with me to hanoi … and i assume, much fur­ther than that! i fell back on my usual trick of play­ing dumb and pre­ten­ded not to under­stand … even though the girls were cute!! lol … i thanked them for the food and cof­fee cup, grabbed my bike and beat a hasty retreat.

i stopped again when it star­ted pour­ing rain. while it rained i enjoyed a cof­fee on the side of the road. the shower didn’t last long and soon enough i was back on the road. i had been lucky with the weather. it had only rained twice while i was rid­ing, and both times were just short showers. soon after i was dry again and speed­ing towards hanoi.

it was the speed­ing that got me in trouble. i had noticed that the closer i got to hanoi the more police there were. at first i paid them no atten­tion because they only seemed inter­ested in pulling over trucks and buses. how­ever, on the out­skirts of a small town, i saw two police­men on my side of the road. one jumped out in front of me and hailed me to stop. i con­sidered hit­ting the throttle and push­ing my way past, but i didn’t know whether they’d try and knock me off the bike. so i stopped the bike and turned off the engine.

i was speed­ing and they knew it, but they didn’t speak a lot of eng­lish. one guy asked for my pass­port and i pre­ten­ded not to under­stand him. they kept repeat­ing that the speed limit was 40km/h. i was doing about 60, but i told them i was doing less than 50. they didn’t care and said that there should be a fine. i told them “ok ok, i’ll go slowly” and asked if i could leave. he said no, and held me there while he decided what to do.

as i was wait­ing, they kept pulling over other motor­cycles. the guy, real­ising that it was more hassle than it was worth, told me to go, but slowly. i prom­ised i would and, grin­ning, got on the bike and hit the road. an hour later i saw two more police­ment pulling over motor­cycles. this time they were on the high­way and there was no reason i should stop. one police­man poin­ted at me to wave me in, but i had given myself enough space that i could just gun it and keep going. i checked my mir­rors to see if they were going to chase me (they had a bike there) but noth­ing happened.

it was get­ting close to dusk and i was close to hanoi when boris decided to cre­ate one final drama. the exhaust pipe, which i’d repaired a week earlier, rattled loose again. i could hear the engine roar­ing like crazy due to the exhaust com­ing dir­ectly out of the engine. i pulled over and began to tighten the exhaust pipe ring. i didn’t have any tools other than a screw­driver, so i figured i’d tighten it as best i could and get it done prop­erly in hanoi. just then a guy pulled over on his bike and asked what was wrong. when he saw the prob­lem, he pro­duced a small pipe with which he hammered the exhaust ring into place. i thanked him and he rode away.

i rode the rest of the way into hanoi and was greeted by a sea of traffic. i hadn’t seen so much traffic since i left ho chi minh city. i rode slowly along with the traffic and worked my way towards the old quarter where i would be able to find a gues­t­house. i got half way there and while i was con­sult­ing my street map, a guy offered to show me the way on his bike. it was only going to cost me a dol­lar and i figured it was worth it to save the time and effort. i showed him the map and street name. he nod­ded and away we went, weav­ing our way in and out of traffic.

i was actu­ally pretty impressed with myself. in the traffic and swerving, i was hand­ling the bike well. my bike was also big­ger than the elec­tric bikes, so oth­ers afforded me a little space here and there. my bike was also noisy, which viet­namese don’t like because it’s not ‘cool’.

my guide pulled over in a street and annouced that we’d arrived. i could see by the street sign that the street was com­pletely wrong. i showed him the map again and he assured me that this was the right street, when it obvi­ously wasn’t. he then asked a stall vendor on the side of the road and she con­firmed that he was wrong. he had no idea where we were, but got dir­ec­tions and took me to the right street. i was tired and annoyed at this point, so when we arrived at the right street i yelled at him. i could have found it myself, but he bull­shit­ted his way into get­ting a bit of cash. he became angry at me, so i gave him his money and told him to piss off. i rode the bike down the nar­row alley­way which lead to my hotel.

i’d arrived in hanoi and my bike trip was over …

fun­nily enough, near my hotel i spot­ted two minsks parked in the alley­way. i stopped and found the own­ers stand­ing nearby. they were both europeans and had arrived in hanoi the day before. they’d bought the bikes in hanoi, riden around north­ern viet­nam, and were now try­ing to sell the bikes. they com­plained that they weren’t hav­ing any luck (there seemed to be quite a few bikes for sale at the time) and, as they were leav­ing in four days, it was an urgent prob­lem. i wished them luck and headed to my gues­t­house. i checked in and as i was dead tired, i slept.

***

this is the end of my motor­cycle trek across viet­nam. the next day i made arrange­ments to go to laos by bus and advert­ised boris for sale on a few web­sites, includ­ing lonely planet’s thorn tree. while i was in laos, the hotel owner sold boris (on my behalf).

rid­ing the rus­sian minsk along the viet­nam coast was a lot of fun. even though the trip was fairly uneventful(uneventful can be a good thing, if it means not hit­ting a truck or cow), it was great to see the viet­namese coun­tryside and share laughs (and cof­fee) with the locals.

hav­ing had good suc­cess with my first cross-country motor­cycle trip, i’m con­sid­er­ing other places where i might be able to get a bike and get away from the tour­ist traps. so far, south­ern india and south amer­ica are def­in­ite options.

for now though, it’s back to buses and trains as i work my around laos, back to viet­nam and even­tu­ally up to china …

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