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Bent_boot
Senior Boarder
2up on 100cc Honda across Vietnam - 2012/03/03 23:43
Hello fellow VMC members,
Myself (Ben Cox) and my girlfriend are traveling around the world for 4 months and the best part should be the 2 weeks spent crossing Vietnam on a tiny Honda with no plans just looking for adventure. We travel light (7kg pack each) but we are still making our little Honda work pretty hard. Only 100cc and a 4 speed tranny means highway cruising only sometimes gets above 80km/hr and that doesn't happen much with Vietnamese roads/traffic and in the mountains we spend a lot of time in 2nd gear going about 30km/hr. The British car show, Top Gear, did a Vietnam road-trip episode which is what inspired this leg of our round the world trip and if you havne`t seen it I would higly recommend it. http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/vietnam-pt-1
Picture of us.
Some background info on us (feel free to skip this); I am 29yr old VMC member from Victoria, BC. I have been riding since 18 but riding a lot more the last 4 years, though only 1 year as a member of the VMC. I ride trials events but have attended a few enduros and hope to buy a KTM200 for enduro competition soon. I have 3 bikes I ride in Canada a Honda CBR600 F2, Honda XL250R and a Sherco 290 (trials bike). My girlfriend rides a 50cc scooter at home and has had some practice on my XL250R. She is also a nurse at home and although this makes me feel slightly better about any little `get offs` that may occur, I am not eager to test her skills. I also do a lot of wrenching on my bikes and again hope not to need those particular skills much on this trip. We have been travelling now for 2 months and have 2 more before I need to be back at work. Only the Vietnam (about 2 weeks) portion of our trip is by bike and therefore I will not be posting much about our other adventures though we are travelling all the way around the world and so far it has been awesome. The rest of our trip is posted on our blog at circumnavigate2012.tumblr.com. We started in Belize, then Guatemala and then 3 weeks in China from Harbin (-20 degrees celsius) in the North to Hong Kong and a lot of in between. After China we flew into Bangkok and spent about 12 days in Thailand (rented a couple of scooters on the islands which was a blast). After Vietnam we are flying to Istanbul to do one and a half months in Eastern Europe.
The plan is to ride from Ho Chi Min city (Saigon) North to Hue (about half way up the country) and then because of time restraints (and because Top gear cheated as well) catch a train (with the bike) North to Ha Noi where we will spend another 3-5 days touring the Northern part of Vietnam, focusing on Ha Long Bay.
We are currently in Na Trang and 8 days out of Ho Chi Min city but I will start the story from the beginning.
Day one in Ho Chi Minn was fun and although the traffic looked a bit crazy it wasn`t the horrible chaos it had been built up to be. I was fairly sure I could handle the melee and since the speeds are always about 30 to 45km/hr not terribly scary anyway. Since our flight arrived at 9am (and Visa on arrival processing took only 15min :clap ) we decided to save a buck and try and catch the local bus to our pre-booked $18 hotel (Blue River 2 near Ben Than market). The bus turned out to be super easy, cost about 22 cents for both of us and dropped us a 5 min walk from our hotel. After check-in and a shower (damn it`s hot here) we went looking for some street food and a motorbike. Since EVERYONE in Vietnam rides a bike, almost every shop or business looks like it is a motorcycle shop as there are about a dozen bikes parked in front. We asked a couple of bike repair shops if they would sell us a bike (nobody speaks English but miming works) but I guess the division between repair and sales is bigger than I thought it would be, since they all refused to sell us anything. I had spent 30min on Craigslist Vietnam back at the hotel and there were a few bikes on there worth looking at but the people selling were on there way to Ho Chi Min and wouldn`t be in town for 2 days, so we kept at it. Stopping to eat as well (of course) which is easy and fun (and cheap) but not moto related. We found the shop pictured below after only 1hr of wandering around and this guy was great, not pushy, really decent English, seemed legit and would either sell us a bike for US$350 or rent us the same bike for US$80 (for up to a month). After inspecting all 3 bikes he had, well the guy was operating out of an awning on the side of a building, how many bikes did you expect him to have, I decided I liked the kick-start only 100cc Honda Win. The chain wasn`t knackered like one of the others, the carb looked freshly cleaned, the gas tank smelled fresh, no leaks around the fork seals and the oil leaks looked pretty minor (of course it leaks oil, come on!). We asked him to hold it for a bit as we kept wandering looking for options. Of course the other options were pushy wierdo guys who wanted $10US a day and to hold on to our passports... no way! Our original guy wanted only a photocopy and was the one who suggested to us that we could easily return his bike from wherever we ended up by train, simply load it on a train (costs about US$25) and mail him the paperwork so he could pick it up.
Traffic in Ho Chi Min
The shop and owner
The next morning we showed up, strapped our back packs to the rear rack and followed him out of town. He dropped us off at a ferry crossing a river that he had marked on the photocopied map book he had given to us the day before and that was it... of we go. Heading to Vung Tau, somewhere East of where we were on tiny roads marked as highways on the map and not marked at all on the roads themselves, oh well at least we had some money in our pocket (only about $40) .
The bike with bags strapped on
Following The Bike`s owner out of Ho Chi Min
Ferry crossing out of HCMC. Our bike is bottom left of img
On the road at last
Stopped for a drink (fresh coconut) and met these kids
I hope this ride report is interesting and relevent. Questions are very welcome.
Post edited by: Bent_boot, at: 2012/03/03 23:45
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