[woodboats]

For our 30th Anniversary my wife & I saved for a motorcycle ride in Vietnam.
On arriving in Hanoi we picked up our 160 Honda road bikes (that thought they were trail bikes) and started to load up for our 17 day trip. These bikes are large over there, a common bike is a Russian 125 Minsk, and of course a large number of scooters. The Minsk is said to be easy to repair but they really are a heap of crap.

Most visitors travel between Saigon, Hanoi and surrounds. We decided to ride in North Vietnam only to visit the Minority Hill Tribe areas. This took us up through the middle, to the far North, then Northeast along the Chinese border before heading back south to Halong Bay and Hanoi. Never saw any other Europeans until going back south. These areas need permits and a compulsory guide. We never went with a tour, just Liz and I and our guide which we picked up for the permit areas.  Many places only a motorbike could make it to due to the road conditions and bamboo bridges on river crossings which cars can’t fit on.

I was very proud the way my wife handled the riding. Leaving Hanoi was pretty wild with all the crazy drivers but once away from the city the roads had much less traffic. You still had many things to avoid, water buffalo, people, chickens, trucks etc. Liz is not that keen on heights either but it wasn’t long before she was handling the high passes (not much separating you from the edge) with ease. Some near miss incidents, which we would normally consider serious over here, soon became common place.

Accommodation was a range of hotels when we came to some mountain towns and staying with families in the villages of the different Hill Tribes. Staying with a family in their stilt house was great. You had a wonderful meal with them, which included a lot of rice wine, and everyone slept in the same large top room of the house. The people in the villages were very kind and welcoming.

The roads varied from good concrete to one foot thick mud, pot holes you drove both in and out of, rocks and many were hard pressed to even call a road. Heaps of fun and our little bikes amazed us with the abuse they took. When I get my videos together I will post them for those that may wish to see the road conditions.

By the time we got back to Hanoi (rush hour this time) we were able to handle the traffic much better. I have figured out the trick to riding in Vietnam. It’s a Zen thing; you sort of become one with the traffic. For the other 99.9% of the time you just drive like a raving lunatic.

Limestone hills..


Taking bikes on boats and river crossings..



Northern Mountains.


Mountain town..


Stilt House accommodation..

Our last few days we treated ourselves to a Junk cruise..

[The Garbone]

That looks like a great vacation. Those hills look like they would be a blast to ride.  If it was not a 24 hour plane ride I would do that in a second....  Thanks for sharing...

[Frenchy]

I made that plane ride once...It was August of 1967. 

[bob bezin]

fabulous just fabulous!

[woodboats]

Well, I have put together a video on the first part of the trip for those that may be interested.
Basically it covers riding through the central areas, while heading north.
Some of the roads are a bit funny, especially bearing in mind that the bikes were only little road bikes and not off road bikes.

An Enfield would have been the perfect bike for this, shame there aren't any over there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrpb_UGyk7k

[icarus]

Looks like it was a great ride! The pictures posted are very nice!
I have very good memories to a similar trip with my mountainbike in 2002.

Did you rent the bikes in Hanoi? I'm asking this because I want to ride from Hanoi to Saigon but preferably not on a Minsk as they seems to be pretty unreliable.

[woodboats]

Hello Icarus

This is the place in Hanoi where we got our bikes from:
http://www.offroadvietnam.com/eng/18.php

I am pretty sure they are the only ones with Hondas. We met a couple of French guys early in our trip and they had hired 2 Minsks from another place. They had so much trouble that they ended up trading them for a couple of scooters. Pretty well ruined their trip for them.

I will keep posting some videos as I finish them. I realize some have no interest in this sort of thing but will keep adding them to this thread for those that may wish to have a look.
Cheers

Next vid:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek-4_jyt4q8
This one just carries on up to the foothills and start of the mountains. The provinces are quite different from each other, the northern province would be the poorest and most islolated of them all.
Roads are being improved but things move pretty slow as mostly manual labour is used. A bike is still the only way to get around all of it.

Even the ethnic Hill Tribe people have trouble getting around much to see people. There could be a few families living on a hill or mountain that hardly ever see families living a few hills over.

But to make sure they do get some sort of social contact with others they have an annual Love Market. More of a festival I guess. Everyone dresses up and makes their way to this town where the market is held.
The boys and girls hope to meet someone new or meet someone they liked from a previous festival. If a couple like each other then the girl goes back to his house (parents house) and stays for a few days to see if she likes it or not. She may then decide to marry him.

There are also "kidnappings". If a boy likes a girl but she isn't that keen on him then sometimes he will get a few friends together and just kidnapper her for a few days . Although it is against her wishes she is taken home on the hope she will change her mind. Of course, no harm comes to her and she is still treated as an honored guest by the family and after a few days taken home again. It is still her choice to marry him or not.

[scoTTy]

thank you for sharing

[dogbone]

Those mountains,,, WOW,   I thought the Rockies were treacherous !

[icarus]

Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed the first video but for some strange reasons I couldn't watch the second one (got a message saying 'This video is not available in your country'...).

Thanks also for the link to the website of the company you rented the bikes from. It's a pity they don't offer one-way rentals.

[icarus]

BTW did you use a helmet camera?

[woodboats]

Yes, I had a helmet cam, it works by plugging it into a handy cam then velcro onto your helmet. I keep it all in a tank bag so it is fairly easy to operate. Sometimes having charged batteries can be a bit of a problem, depending on where you are.

I think my choise of music has been the problem with "not working in some countries".
I am no too sure if anyone can actually view it or if it is just some places.

Youtube can be a bit funy on music issues with copyright and such.

[woodboats]

Just the next video installment.
This covers the only area where permits were needed, the far north provinces of Ha Giang and Cao Bang.
I don't think permits are for political reasons, probably just a bit of revenue gathering. No one checked them and we could really go anywhere we wanted to. Contrary to what some may think, Vietnam is a very open country to travel in, you can go anywhere you wish to.

There are some checkpoints, you know, barrier arm, guards, red lights etc. but they don't seem to apply to tourists. After waiting in line at our first checkpoint we were waved through to a small path around the barrier arm. After that we never even bothered to stop at a checkpoint, just found a way around the barrier and gave the guards a big wave.
The police will never ever stop a tourist, unless you do something really wrong. To much paper work and a total language problem.

The person riding in front in some shots is my wife. I just wanted to mention how well she did throughout this ride. I am 56 and she is 51, she does ride at home but not as much as I do, so she was a bit nervous about some parts. She has never liked heights but handled the mountain areas quite well, only rode her road bike so some of the mud and rough gravel was a first for her also. She took things a bit slow and easy for the first half of the trip but became a bit of a dare devil for the second half!The crazy driving and passing was a bit of a shock to her but she soon was driving as crazy as the rest of them.
Living rough and that sort of stuff she was already used to from our other travels. I was quite proud of her.
Of course you need skills to ride a motorcycle, but I feel having the spirit to want to ride helps out also.

The best part is she is working her way towards a Royal Enfield trip to India.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wohyizjumas

[plane95302]

What an awsome trip. This may make my bucket list.

[woodboats]

The final vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqNrnwZ8fHo

Thank goodness you say! LOL
This vid  is the last stretch of the trip. Basically after going inland to a lake area for a look around we then followed the east border roads that would take us back to the South China Sea. The first few days of these travels were quite interesting. While stopped a small village for a feed,  I noticed a road that had a guard and was blocked with 2 drums holding a pole. Looking on my map I could see it was a frontier road that followed a river right on the Chinese border for approx 50 km. Even though we were quite often following the border, it was usually 10 – 20 km away and you couldn’t really tell where it was.
I was determined that we were going to see China so I showed the guard my map to where we were heading and made motions that we wanted to go on this road. He just shook his head “no”. I  went back to where Liz was and dug our passports out, took them back to the guard with a $50,000 note ($5 NZ) . He couldn’t read the passports except for our Vietnam Visa but he looked at them for a bit, took the note and waved us through.
We saw one Chinese town along the other side of the river that was completely walled, not in a Berlin Wall sort of way , more of a “your arrows can’t get me” kind of wall. It would have probably been a hard journey getting to this town from the Chinese side.
At least I got to wave to some Chinamen, who waved back.

The further south we went the more dangerous the riding became.. Not because of the roads, which mostly now were tar seal, but from all the huge coal trucks. This whole area is a coal mining area, I put the camera away from all the dust. A bike means nothing to these trucks, no one cares. The roads were narrow enough but quite often an oncoming truck would pass another without any thought of who else was using the road. Sometimes you had to stop and pull quickly off the road or more often just dodge around one of them. It didn’t matter which side of the road you used, just whichever had the most clear space to fit through!

We arrived at a flash hotel in Halong Bay absolutely filthy. Must have looked like a couple of Mad Max raccoons with all the coal dust. Left our bikes and our laundry at the hotel while we spent a few days cruising. They even had our bikes cleaned for us!
The cruise was nice but after spending most of our time without seeing any other Europeans or even any English signs it felt a bit weird being in a tourist area. I did get on good with our captain so he let me pilot the junk for about an hour while talking and drinking tea.

Leaving Halong bay for Hanoi I thought it would only be about a 4 hour ride. It actually took us 6 hours which put us right into Hanoi rush hour traffic. We had our orange vests on and every once in a while you got a glimpse of the other person so no one got lost. Actually, it wasn’t really that bad, sure, it was like driving in a lunatic asylum , but we were more into the “zone” of crazy driving by now, so handled it OK.

Would we go back? Certainly.
This April we are hoping to finish the west of North Vietnam,  that we didn't see,  and finish up in Cambodia, which apparently also has some interesting riding.