Prep Days
We’ve spent the last two days in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) prepping for our motorbike journey northward. Over the next three weeks, depending on our route, we’ll travel 2500-3000km (1500-1800 miles) from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, traversing Vietnam’s coastline, inland mountains, and beautiful countryside. While we have some planned stops, we’ll determine much of the route as we go. No matter what route we take, it will definitely be an adventure!
The first step was procuring motorbikes. To do this, we checked some of the online forums for travelers selling their bikes, asked around at our hostel, and wandered around the tourist district, where there are literally hundreds of places ready to sell you bikes. We couldn’t seem to make any transactions with other travelers work out, so ended up purchasing from a bike sales and service shop: Mr. Motorbikes, or something like that, run by a mother and her son. The son, Phan, took care of all the English transactions, but his mom was really running the show. Ha!
The going rate for motorbikes these days, really no matter what you get – manual, semi-automatic, or automatic – is about $250 a pop, give or take. And, assuming you don’t ruin them, you can typically sell them back for about the same amount, assuming you have the blue card for the bike.
What is this blue card you mention?? This is basically a registration card for the bike that has the license plate number, the engine number, and chassis number, and they all must match the numbers on your bike. WITHOUT THIS CARD THE BIKE IS WORTHLESS!! If the numbers don’t match, THE BIKE IS WORTHLESS. No one that knows anything about buying a motorbike in Vietnam will purchase a bike without the blue card, so if you don’t have it when it comes time to sell the bike, the bike is WORTH ZERO DOLLARS. We were sure to get the blue card for each bike and check that all of the numbers matched. These also need to be kept on us at all times when we are on the bikes.
We decided to go with semi-automatic bikes, which will handle the mountains better than full automatics, but be less of a hassle than full manuals (at least for me). The semi-automatic variety comes as the Honda Wave, pretty much all of which have 110CC engines. The one general rule of thumb that we read online is that you do not want a Chinese engine. As mechanical as I am, I can tell you that one of the bikes we got is gray and one of them is red. Due to this level of expertise, I let Shawn do all the test driving and selection.
Most of the bikes have made the trip from north to south and back again, maybe even several times. You’ll never know how many times though, because the odometer doesn’t work on any of them. Likely neither does the speedometer, or the fuel gauge. This is pretty typical and doesn’t really matter. Basically the main things you are looking for (as much as you can possibly tell from some test driving) are a good engine and a good electrical system. Anything else can be fixed easily and cheaply, but these are the big two.
One of the reasons we went with the bike shop that we bought from is that they were extremely helpful and had a service shop right on site. Of course, you never can tell exactly how genuine people are being, their number one goal is to make a sale of course, but they brought out as many bikes as we wanted until we found ones that we were satisfied with, and were willing to fix or help with absolutely anything we needed. They also encouraged us to test the bikes over the next couple days in/around Ho Chi Minh and bring them back if there were absolutely any issues before we began our trip northward. We took them up on this too, returning to replace a mirror, which they did happily for free… probably just happy that it wasn’t something more major.
Of course you could save yourself some of the hassle and buy new bikes… but that is, of course, (1) a lot more expensive, and (2) pretty much takes all of the adventure out of taking a motorbike trip through Vietnam on a bike that has a vague number of miles and issues. It’s pretty much ensured that you will break down at some point and need mechanical service for this or that along the way, and it’s all part of the trip. There are motorbike repair shops probably about every 10 feet in cities and towns, and even if one isn’t near, pretty much all of the locals know how to fix the bikes and are more than willing to help (we’ve already noticed this and have only had the bikes for about 12 hours).
Luckily, most motorbike shops make it easy for you and generally throw in all the extras you need free with the bike: helmet, backpack rack, bungees (to attach said backpack to rack), wheel locks, and even a phone holder so you can pull up navigation while on the bike. We’ve been too afraid to use the phone clip while in the city, since phone swiping is a common crime (even right out of your hands if you aren’t careful), but we’ll make use of it once we’re outside the more congested areas. Additionally, the helmets provided (and pretty much what all the Vietnamese wear) just barely qualify as “helmets”. They are good enough to make you bike legal (since it’s illegal to ride without helmets here), but the helmets are a thin shell that would do little to actually protect your noggin, so we plan to pick up some better ones.
With the bikes and equipment ready to roll, we tested them out riding around Ho Chi Minh all day, running some errands and generally just getting used to driving in the chaotic city traffic. For anyone that has been in Vietnam (or really almost anywhere in Asia), you’ll know that the city streets are absolutely a mess of vehicles – particularly thousands of motorbikes – all traveling with very few noticeable or enforced traffic rules.
While they generally drive on the right side of the road in Vietnam, it’s not uncommon to see bikes going the wrong direction along the side of the street, driving on the sidewalks when the roads are congested, and generally weaving in and out of traffic and the lanes in any way that is most convenient and expedient. While the Vietnamese have become expert drivers in these conditions, flowing around any traffic and pedestrians, stopping and going in an instant, and generally making the chaos look like a walk in the park, for western drivers, it can be beyond nerve-wrecking. But, we managed to stay alive on our first day driving in the city (barely)!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time for sight-seeing in Ho Chi Minh, but we did make a trip to the War Remnants Museum, which provides a somber history of the Vietnam War, with excellent photographic displays chronicling the events leading up to the war through the end of the war and ongoing effects and clean-up of landmines and dioxins like Agent Orange. A significant part of Vietnam’s history, we plan to check out more war related sites as we make our trip northward.
With Ho Chi Minh as our chaotic motorbike testing ground, we are excited to head out of the city to calmer roads and more scenic views tomorrow as we head toward Dalat. Let the adventure begin!