Motorbiking Vietnam

So its about time I started a blog, the 4 of us set out on the 13th of January and have had many adventures since then. I've been very lazy and haven't been bothered to blog any of it! We landed in Bangkok, made our way to south Thailand and from there have worked our way to HCMC over the last 2 months. At some point I will try to update you all with the more interesting stories that occured over that time but its not going to be today!

This blog will pretty much deal with the motorbiking adventures from Vietnam, we had seperated from Fi (our token girl) in Thailand when she went to meet her friend Sarah and the plan was to meet with her again in Ho Chi Minh, however as so often happens with plans this one went ary! We arrived in HCMC to discover that Fi had been robbed in KL and was now with her friends in Brisbane! Down one person before we even had the bikes.

The idea to drive Vietnam was conceived somewhere in Thailand and on Saturday the idea started to become reality. We walked out of our hostel to see two westerns pushing a couple of Minsks bikes down the alley, they gave us the number of Kevin and 3 hours later I became a motorbike owner! So on Monday afternoon, with about 40 minutes motorbike experience from Saturday/Sunday we set off on a trip that will bring us through the insane traffic of Vietnam, along the beautiful coast and through the mountainous dirt roads of the north, total trip about 2500km. Who needs experience! ;)

So to the bikes, the Minsk is an loud, oily, smokey 125cc motorbike developed by the Sovet Union based on a World War II design. It is famous for breaking down but also for being easy to repair, which we have discovered so far, mine needed a new gasket head before we even left & Colm's throttle wire has fallen out of the throttle twice so far! Despite that, I have to say I love my bike! It is worth noting that Alan didn't want to drive a clutch bike so was landed with a hilarious Honda Dream II, the moped of choice for old locals and women. Sorry Al!

Day 1
Kevin has his shop just outside of HCMC, which was a massive incentive to us when buying the bikes, as the traffic in the city can only be described as manic. Not the best place to learn how to drive a motorbike. We arrived at Kevins about 12pm to discover he was in the city on a broken down bike, the mechanic to overlook our bikes was a no show and we had no straps to tie the bags on the bikes! All of this was overcome eventually and we set off at 2:30pm down highway 1, this was a bit fo a crazy experience. Imagine the M50, bumper to bumper, with 100s of motorbikes going down the hard shoulder. Random lane changing and sudden braking occur every few seconds. We made it through this carefully and got onto the road to Vung Tau, our first stop, which is about 100km south of HCMC. The journey was a great learning experience, Colm came within half a foot of being hit by a car, a local pulled along side me to let me know my bag was about to fall off and Alan almost got blind sided once or twice! We also learnt that biking takes a loooong time in Vietnam. The 100km with a couple of stops to stretch the legs took 3 hours! We managed to find a cheap hostel outside of town, ditched the bags and went for dinner.

I'm ashamed to say that Monday night was one of the first times I got truely lost, we ventured into town for a bit of exploring which turned in 2 hours driving around and around the city, which isn't that big, looking to find our way back to the coast! Alan managed to run out of petrol and Colms throttle wire fell out of the bike. A bunch of locals gathered around Colm, gave him the thumbsdown sign with a raspberry noise to show what they thought of the Minsk but then helped him fix it. We found some petrol for Alan, asked a taxi driver directions to the coast and eventually made it back to the hostel for some beers before heading to sleep. Day one complete. 2 almost crashes, 1 breakdown, 0 deaths.

Day 2
We had a longer journey up the coast heading towards the beach town of Mui Nei. The total journey being about 180km, we went out to start up the bikes about 9:30am, a half hour of repairs was neccessary (Colms throttle wire again, Gregs stand) and we set off. Pham Thau has a Jesus Statue that it claims is bigger than the world famous Rio icon so we cruised around the coast to check this out. At 37meters and facing out to sea it was a pretty cool sight but too far away to really be impressive! The villa off the coast was much better.

We powered up along the coast and saw some beautiful scenary but I'm still without a camera so I dont have any pictures of it! We stopped for lunch at a place along the road side, the lady running it had zero English as expected but after some pointing & laughing we ended up with one of the best lunchs I've had in Vietnam so far and which only cost 15,000 Dong. In HCMC we were paying 60,000 for lunch, 20,000 for drinks!

A couple more hours driving brought us onto the highway and into Phan Thiet. From there we headed onto Mui Nei, the beach resort isn't actually in Mui Nei but along the 13km stretch of road leading into the town. Hotels are dotted along the beach front on the right and restaurants across the road on the left. As I said above our bikes are pretty loud and pretty smokey, so finding hostels is a mixed bag. Some places see us drive up and yell "full!!!" straight away while others places including the one we are staying now take a great interest in the 4 westerns on the old dirty Motorbikes. OK, so I'm kinda rambling on, still new to this blog lark, summary of day 2 being, we found a place with a pool, went for dinner and Colms throttle fell out again, but we are all still alive and the bikes are still more or less working!

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to post after Paddys Day!

Day two complete, 1 almost crash, 3 breakdowns, 0 deaths.