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Bent_boot
Senior Boarder
Re:2up on 100cc Honda across Vietnam - 2012/03/15 09:54
This post is the reason for Ride Reports... I have to share this amazing road with other riders who would appreciate something so perfect. This is probably the best road I have EVER ridden, the mountains were incredible, the waterfalls went for thousands of feat, the weather was perfect, almost no traffic and hundreds of breathtaking vistas… and it lasted the WHOLE day, about 150kms. It was AMAZING. The mountain pass we went through must have been a few thousand feet up and was pretty chilly for an hour or two but the clouds (in pics) were just for ambiance and we didn’t get rained on a bit.
The map we are using for the trip is just a bunch of photocopies stapled together given to us by the guy we rented our bike from, he also suggested a lot of our route and marked this road with pen on the map because it hadn't been there when the map was printed. (it still isn't completed so that is understandable) Here is my best guess at the route we took (marked on this google map pic as TL723)
Leaving Da Lat and heading up into the higher mountains we were still very warm, wearing Tshirt and shorts, stopped for a Vietnamese coffee and it must have been almost 30C but then we started to really head up hill
Only a kilometer or so was still being constructed but the guys working on it were all super happy to see us and waved and shouted as we rode through taking pics and weaving in the loose sand
As we got higher the temperature fell rapidly and we stopped to get our jackets out
Here is the classic ADVrider pose at the top of the pass, from here on it was downhill out of the mountains to the coast of Na Trang
A break in the clouds as we start the decent
That is a waterfall on the far side of the valley, it was huge!
One of the hairpin turns that littered the day with fun
Another gratuitous posing shot
A good view of the road clinging to the edge of the mountain
Same shot as above but without zooming in on the road
View down the valley
After we came out of the mountains and dodged some water buffaloes and pigs crossing the road we stopped to snap a shot of this beautiful river
The highway was in pretty rough shape after we got out of the mountains, crews were repairing it though. We were dodging steam rollers and other huge road building machinery all over the place, no signal people or organization, just up to us to not get squashed
The change from towering mountains to dead flat rice paddies was pretty quick, here I am as the sun is setting about an hour outside of Na Trang
After stopping to admire the view and take pictures for so much of the day, not to mention our tiny bike's miserable top speed we got into Na Trang after dark and stopped at a hotel on the main road so we could eat and sleep. The next moring we took off for the beach and found a proper hotel to relax in for a couple of days, here is the view from our ($10) room.
And the beach right outside our hotel
Cruising around Na Trang, a beautiful city with good food and just a few too many tourists
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Re:2up on 100cc Honda across Vietnam - 2012/03/15 10:45
Ben, this stuff is excellent, keep it coming.
Ian
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Bent_boot
Senior Boarder
Re:2up on 100cc Honda across Vietnam - 2012/03/19 15:29
Leaving Nha Trang was tough, we liked it a lot and hadn't seen as much as we were hoping to but time is ticking and we want to get to Da Nang and Hoi An by the end of our 2nd week on the bike. The road out of Nha Trang was spectacular, not quite as good as the road from Da Lat but cliff side with great views over a turquoise ocean.
The ride today was excellent, we had heard HWY 1 was pretty boring and full of large vehicle traffic but this part was a ton of fun and traffic was light
There were lots of tiny towns dotting the coast North of Da Nang
For the first time on the whole trip we have been dodging broken glass, I don't know why this particular part of Vietnam has it when the rest didn't. Though we are riding on Hwy 1 which we haven't done much of yet and this is the biggest most direct route north/south in Vietnam. Or maybe the tire repair shops (which are plentiful) are trying to help themselves to a bit more business. We managed to avoid any punctures but we did get caught by a few sprinklers that were misting the road. I have no idea why the locals had water spraying out constantly on the side of the highway, it wasn't really in position to wash anything or hydrate any plants... ? Maybe they are for the use of the water buffaloes who would otherwise have to cross the road for a dip in the pond and then stop traffic on their way back?
Coming down out of the coastal mountains
Leaving the coast for a few miles for some boring straight stuff
War memorials, in Vietnam, are all over the place and usually surrounded by hundreds of graves. We almost always drive past at least 2 a day but sometimes we drive past up to 10. We were the only people visiting this one at the time.
Often we are riding on the shoulder of the road, there is usually a car lane and a wide shoulder for motorbikes/bicycles/pedestrians to share and of course the motorbikes pull into the road when necessary, this is what you would expect. What I didn't expect was to also be sharing the shoulder of the road with crops that need to be dried, all along our ride we have been avoiding coffee, grain, hay, etc. that is spread out on tarps along the side of the highway. Sometimes we see tire tracks right through the middle of someones food and other times we have to brake hard to allow a truck to pass before moving into the car lane to avoid a huge pile of hay!
When we finally arrived to Song Cau we stopped at a couple of hotels where they motioned to us that they were full. Since very few Vietnamese (outside of major cities) speak any English they motion a negative response through hand motion similar to unscrewing a light bulb. We had never encountered this vertical 'so so' motion before Vietnam but any insight into this generic negative signal would be appreciated. Stopping at a cafe to ask for a hotel seemed to work as some locals were happy to point us in the right direction. We were a little apprehensive about these directions at first because the direction they pointed us in was heading out of town and down a very unkempt dirt/gravel road. But when we had ridden past the school, some small farms, more livestock wandering the road and some fisherman loading 3000lbs of fish onto a moped we found a great hotel that was actually separate small bungalows right on the beach. It was a little more than we wanted to pay ($12) but they also provided us with a decent and cheap dinner; so it all worked out.
The road out of town eventually got us to a hotel
School outside Song Cau (the next morning)
Swimming after a long day riding, beach about 5 steps from our hotel room
Post edited by: Bent_boot, at: 2012/03/19 15:37
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Bent_boot
Senior Boarder
Re:2up on 100cc Honda across Vietnam - 2012/04/03 08:06
This will be the end of the Vietnam ride report... the last few days were kind of lame compared with earlier roads/adventures. We are now riding North to Hoi An on Hwy 1 which everyone has warned us against... people and websites/forums warned that it was dangerous and huge trucks would constantly passing, etc. I would also warn against Hwy 1 but only because it is BORING! The trucks are present but we are usually doing the passing and there are not too many. But the damn road is straight and lame. The last 3 days of riding have kind of merged in my memory now (a few weeks later, sorry... we are continuing to travel and there is not a ton of time to waste online). I am therfore combining our last days on the bike into this one post and will not be boring you with our continued (non-moto) travels. Except to say that riding rented scooters and ATVs in the Greek islands is a good time and Turkey is an awesome country to visit with super friendly people and easy to navigate transportation systems.... I would HIGHLY recommend Turkey by bike or any other mode of transport.
The day after Song Cau we rode a long day of Hwy 1 with the highlight being a mid-afternoon (blazingly hot) stop at the Champa ruins which we spotted on a hill-top and spent 20mins searching for on the back roads. The hike to the top of the hill they are situated on was short but in 35 degree heat I was still sweating my ass off. The ruins reminded me a lot of the Mayan ruins we saw in Belize/Guatemala.
Ruins of Champa
I really loved our bike trip as a whole but I would recommend sticking to the twisty roads in the south of Vietnam and not trying to cover a lot of distance on HWY 1, you can always transport yourself and your bike by overnight train to the North if you are set on riding the North of the country as well as the south. The mountain roads and coastal riding we did were fantastic and I would love to go back. The highlights were: Vung Tao, Da Lat, Na Trang, Ma Lamb and obviously the roads in between. Here is some proof that you should stick to the smaller roads and stay clear of Hwy 1.
Hwy 1 on the route to Hoi An
This damn hwy is as straight as the others were twisty, here is one of the few corners
Our last night was spent in Hoi An, a popular tourist testination in Vietnam. Hoi An is famous for being beautiful, quaint and blah, blah... it is mostly a tourist town now and has no real Vietnamese flavour/essence/grit. we enjoyed our fancy dinner but we paid tourist prices for it and damn but that sucks after eating for $3 a meal (for both of us) the last couple of weeks. Hoi An IS pretty, especially after dark, but it is all a show put on for tourists and I wish we were back in Ma Lam walking over sewers and eating on children sized plastic chairs with the locals super surprised to see us and the drunk guy who wouldn't leave us alone trying to help us buy everything in town.
The end of our moto-trip is here in Da Nang (an hour outside of Hoi An). We are sending our bike back to Saigon via train and heading North to Hanoi and Ha Long bay before flying to Istanbul via Poland. The train ticket for the bike was only slightly more than it was for us (about $30cdn for bike and $25 for each of us).
I will let you down easy with some more bike pics....
I like this one, using a bike to transport another bike
And this is great as we westerners claim to need an SUV to drive up a driveway that sometimes has leaves on it or maybe to carry some groceries but in Vietnam you can deliver drywall with a scooter
Another small thumper with class
What is with the rocket shaped thing on top of the cylinder?
We left Vietnam being used to seeing bikes like this And arrived in Istanbul and now this is the typical ride
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and Turkey is an awesome country to visit with super friendly people and easy to navigate transportation systems.... I would HIGHLY recommend Turkey by bike or any other mode of transport. 
