Motorcycle Diaries

Hello faithful followers!

We have survived our first ten days in Vietnam!

After taking the overnight bus from Kunming, we arrived at the Vietnamese border town of Lao Cai, walked across the border and jumped onto a minibus to Sapa. After and hour of sitting and waiting for the bus to fill, we finally took off for Sapa.

Once in Sapa, we did the familiar "haul the bags to every single hotel and look at the rooms in order to find the best deal" before we finally decided on a place, threw our bags down, kicked off our shoes, and passed out from exhaustion after (surprisingly) not being able to sleep at all on an overnight bus where your bed is only five feet long, a foot and a half wide, and the people across from you are smoking. Ahhh, the joys of budget traveling.

After a whole day of recovery, we managed to get out of bed early on the second day and rent a motorcycle. :). Kerri was very trusting and it didn't even phase her when I confessed that the last time a really rode a motorcycle I was ten years old and my feet couldn't touch the ground. Side note: being tall enough to touch the ground really makes riding a lot easier.

We had so much fun on your motorcycle that, after one beautiful day of trekking through the villages around Sapa, we decided to rent a motorcycle for three days and do our own tour through northern Vietnam. We were feeling pretty confident after the first day of riding on windy roads, passing trucks and pedestrians, so we convinced the guy who owns the bike to let us take it without a guide and just ride off on our own. I looked over the map with him and explained the route we wanted to take and he said no problem.

We show up on the morning to rent the motorcycle and he shows us our "new bike", which is an old Minsk that looks like its been through a lot. Of course I made sure the horn, blinkers and headlight were working, the speedometer and tachometer were broken, but who needs those, right? I took it for a quick test drive and decided to give it a shot.

Kerri and I took off around 10:30 am and rode for three hours before we hit our first real town. We (mostly me, I guess) attracted a lot of stares. I don't think a lot of tourists visit these places. There weren't any hotels in the town, and since it was still relatively early, we decided to push it to the next town, another four hours.

We set off around 2 p.m. after a few wrong turns and confusing interactions with Vietnamese people who had no idea what we were doing when we waved our map in their face. The road in the afternoon was beautiful, green valleys with limestone spires. Our progress was hindered by the occasional water buffalo (these things are massive) in the road, little kids playing, and roadwork. After a few hours, we were getting a little worried we weren't on the right road so we started asking for directions again. We finally found someone who we could communicate with and confirmed we were on the right track. Reassured and excited, we started cruising again as the sun was starting to set. We crested on hill, passed a massive truck taking up the whole road, rounded a corner and the road went straight into a massive river. More confusion. A barge being pushed by a tugboat came over and we packed ourselves on.

Once on the other side of the river, it was a race off of the barge before the trucks, breathing diesel sucks. Side note: don't mess with Vietnamese people on motorcycles, or any Asians for that matter, they were born (literally) on one and they are better riders.

We climbed over a pass just in time to see the sun dip below the horizon, so I really started pushing it on the way down. We were making really good time when we were slowed by a gravel road. The gravel road turned into a dirt path about four feet wide with little water channels running through it. We found a dirt trail that looked no different from a walking path (except for the obvious motorcycle tracks). After a few minutes of deliberations, three H'mong (minority locals) women walked up and reassured us that this was the only way after triple and quadruple checking.

A few minutes later, a man came running over to help as I was getting ready to cross the shittiest make-shift bridge I have ever seen. He was helping me push the bike when I slammed on the breaks before we got on the bridge so I could inspect. It was bamboo, that looked like it was tied together with reeds. I pointed at the bridge and said the only word that we could both understand "OK?" He gave me a nod and pushed again. When we reached the other side, he pushed me out of the way, jumped on, revved the engine to a degree that I have not heard, and proceeded to burn the clutch/drive/walk the bike up the remainder of the steep, single track dirt path.

Running to catch up with him, I was pondering how much I should tip this angel for helping us. He answered that question by demanding that we pay him 50,000 Dong ($3)! After some arguing, not because its too much money, but because I hate getting ripped off, we gave in after he kept pointing at the marvelous feet of engineering that was his bridge.

Once we finally saw the town, we pulled over, went into a little restaurant and yelled "hotel" - we were a little pumped from the adrenaline, this might have seemed a little strange to them. Luckily, an equally strange man named Le, was there and decided to take us under his wing. "You come with me", he said. We obeyed.

The next morning, we woke up to find that the bike was leaking oil and the electrical system was entirely shot, the kill switch didn't work. I had to turn it off by holding the break and letting out the clutch. Easy enough.

We took off around 10 am with bellies full of Pho and high spirits. We were pretty confident considering we rigorously studied the maps the night before, we didn't want any surprises this time. We were surprised early when we realized that our destination wasn't really called Lai Chau, like we thought, but the name recently changed to Muong Lai, and is twice as far as we thought.

We rode through a windy, mostly gravel, road, dodging water buffalo, trucks, kids, heavy machinery, and potholes for four hours before we made it to Lai Chua, which is now Muong Lai. Not impressed by the town and confident that we could make it all the way back, we looked at each other, gave the nod and said, "let's do this".

We took off from Muong Lai at around 2 pm and cruised through the hot, flat river valley towards Pa Tan, and then turning towards Sapa, our destination, from there. After two hours of making really good time, cruising mostly in fourth gear (a big deal on this bike and these roads) we made it to Pa Tan.

We finally made it to Lai Chau and realized that it used to be called Tam Duong, the town we were looking for, and the government renamed it when they decided to start construction on a damn that would eventually flood the old town of Lai Chau and the whole valley that we rode through.

It was good timing to ride through that valley as we probably won't ever have a chance to see it again before it fills with water.

The next morning, we got on the bike and realized that there were three police officers pulling people over right next to the hotel. We packed our bag and strapped it on to the bike and set off.

We pulled out slowly, but not too slowly, I didn't want to give the officers too much time to see that the needles for the speedometer and tachometer were bouncing around. Besides, I don't have a motorcycle license and I wanted to get away from them before they had too much time to contemplate how much money they could suck out of us foreigners.

We made it the next few hours back to Sapa, turned in the bike, and checked back into our favorite hotel room and relaxed until it was time to catch the train to Hanoi.

Before leaving or Hanoi, we read several accounts of foreigners being ripped off by taxi drivers and hotels.

We arrived in Hanoi at 4:30 in the morning and stood amongsWe have been in Hanoi now for two days