The Slow Road to Sapa
You know how we said we were going to get motorcycles, and ride them through Vietnam? Yeah, this is the beginning of that story.
Being a great way to see the countryside, motorcycling in Vietnam has become extremely popular amongst foreigners. Thus, it’s really easy to find a bike that will cart you from one end of the country to the other being sold amongst the hostels and hotels in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The most popular models are called ‘Honda Wins’ which are generally speaking not Hondas or Wins (as Honda stopped production of these years ago), but Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese copies. These little manual-transmission 125cc bad boys are, generally speaking, absolute piles of junk, but they’re dime-a-dozen and extremely simple to fix. This is very obvious as you drive down the road and see motorcycle mechanics every three or four kilometers or so; evidently this is how these guys stay in business.
The Vietnamese, though, usually don’t drive the Wins unless they’re in dire straights. They generally go with scooter-style setups, with semi-automatic transmissions, like the newer Honda Waves or Futures. These guys are more powerful, with better suspensions, and more reliable, while still hitting that 125cc sweet spot that Vietnam seems to love so much.
So, after trying out a few old Honda Wins off other backpackers, we managed to find one that didn’t completely suck, and DJ Khaled was added to the stable. We honestly don’t know how these guys managed to get across Vietnam on some of these rattletraps, but we’re glad we didn’t have to find out – DJ seems to be a (relatively) sweet running little ride.
Michael J. Fox joined the lineup shortly after. Rachel, having never driven a motorcycle before, opted for the simpler and more reliable semi-automatic Honda Future – hence the name.
We got both motorcycles back to the hotel we were staying at in Hanoi, and the next day after our Ha Long Bay experience, we loaded them up early in the morning and set out. The goal was, by leaving at about 6:30, we would be able to beat Hanoi’s infamously insane rush hour.
Well, that didn’t exactly go as planned.
Rachel had been on scooters before, and we had every confidence that she could do this, but I might have made a few minor oversights. These were as follows:
1. That we would actually get on the road at 6:30 AM;
2. That Hanoi traffic “couldn’t be that bad…”
3. That I would know how to properly pack bags onto a motorcycle, having never done it before.
I didn’t think our start time was actually that bad, having gotten on the road at about 6:45, but apparently it was enough for Hanoi to go from relatively kind of OK to full-blown rush hour. You know how we said a couple of posts ago that Hanoi was endlessly chaotic? Yeah, Exhibit A, right here.
Rachel had taken some riding lessons from myself and one of the mechanics at Style (the fantastic and highly recommended shop where she bought her whip), so she knew how the bike handled, but stupid Allen packed the bag wrong on the luggage rack and made it, well, a little wobbly.
We made it about three blocks relatively OK, but then when we tried to get through a busy traffic circle on DJ and Michael, Rachel’s wobbly bike, she got a little freaked out with all the traffic and pulled the bike over onto the sidewalk. This Vietnamese bystander, bless him, tried his best to help her as he saw she was struggling, but he got a little over-zealous; he grabbed her bike by the handlebars to assist her in stopping it safely, but he somehow managed to grab the throttle instead. The bike being a semi-auto and in gear, of course, went ass-over-teakettle. Rachel jumped off before anything happened, while Allen dealt with the following scenario: simultaneously trying to fight off our Vietnamese ‘friend’ and wrestle the bike down, while running behind a fully loaded motorcycle doing a wheelie through the busiest traffic circle in the Old Quarter.
Though it was a bit of a panic, no one got hurt. That said, it was definitely an auspicious start to our trip. We re-packed the bags on the bikes to get rid of the wobble, and set off again.
All in all, it took us around three and a half hours to get from the center of Hanoi to the outskirts of the city. Part of this was due to a couple more traffic crises (one of which involved a six-way intersection, non-working signal lights, and a broken down bus in the middle), part of it was due to the fact that we stopped and had breakfast, and part of this was just due to the fact that Hanoi traffic moves very slowly.
Nothing really moves very fast in Hanoi, traffic included. The quickest car on any of the roads within the city is probably going no more than 40 kilometers per hour, if that. However, the volume can be quite intimidating. And the rules of the road? Well, they don’t really exist.
Lanes? They mean nothing.
Speed limits? Irrelevant.
Lane splitting? Expected.
There is only one rule to driving here that must be followed at all times: you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and so can everyone else. You really need to have your head on a swivel here to keep track of everything, but once you get used to the flow of it there does seem to be some sort of method to the madness, some sort of delicate balance of common courtesy and aggressiveness. Once we’d found our rhythm in the Vietnamese traffic, we were able to make it to the outskirts of the city, where everything calmed down considerably.
Once in the burbs, Rachel really came into her own on the bike. The ‘trial-by-fire’ was very intense for her, but at the end of the day (literally, in this case), it made her a great rider. That day we went around 150 km; not very far by North American terms, but a pretty decent distance by Vietnam standards.
Spectacular albeit random temple, Day 1
Amazing detail in the temple, Day 1
More of this beautiful temple, Day 1
We planned on doing a four day drive up to Sapa, route courtesy of “Vamp’s Route to Sapa,” so we saw some pretty great stuff on the way. The first day, especially, on the way to Mai Chau, we saw a great Vietnamese temple with a ceremony going on inside; we met another gringo on the road (our new friend Wendell) and the three of us shared in some ancestor worship and checked out some caves behind the temple with more altars inside.
Our second day involved the ride from Mai Chau to Moc Chau – two similarly named towns that couldn’t be any more different. Whereas Mai Chau was fairly developed, Moc Chau was very much more “pure” Vietnam – no one spoke English, there were few places to stay other than the local nha nghis (Vietnamese: guest house i.e. shitty hotel), and we had to search forever for food that didn’t involve thit cho (Vietnamese: dog meat). The ride between had it’s highlights and lowlights – intense heat and humidity, beautiful views of the Black river, a stop at a gorgeous waterfall, and a brief but intense thunderstorm which forced us to stop for a few minutes (but somehow missed the entire highway from 200 meters ahead of us onwards to Moc Chau). Our accommodation that evening was a converted shipping container situated on a tea plantation – dingy room, but couldn’t be more stunning in terms of setting (Moc Chau Arena Village, Moc Chau).
The extents of the rural Vietnam-y-ness near Moc Chau was on full display when we stopped at the waterfall, as we got a chance to be local celebrities for a few minutes. A group of about five or six fifteen-year-old Vietnamese guys came down to the waterfall shortly after we did, and they seem to take a shining to us - especially Rachel. They were taking photos with us, giving us their weird cucumbers, their beef jerky, and some warm beers they probably stole from their Dads. I don't know why we were all of a sudden so popular, but just goes to show what a commodity a couple of blonde English speakers can be in the Middle of Nowhere, Vietnam.
Pondering the corn fields and the heat, Day 2
Than Bioc Waterfall -- notice our friends on the right, Day 2
Our shipping container room was sitting in these beautiful tea fields, Day 2
The third day was less eventful but no less beautiful. The route we took had us going through beautiful, twisting, secondary highways, over high mountain passes, through pastoral hamlets, and taking a ferry across the Black River, all the while screaming hello and giving out high-fives to local kids. We briefly had to stop again due to a rainstorm at one point and took shelter on a random guy’s porch – the owner of the house came out, gave us some water and asked us to sit down and hang out with him for a bit. He didn’t speak a word of English, but his hospitality spoke endlessly of him and the Vietnamese people.
Views of terraced rice paddies, Day 3
More terraced rice paddies, this time flooded, Day 3
Just one of the many tea fields we drove through on our way to Tu Le, our rest stop for the night, Day 3
Ferry over the Black River, Day 3
Finally, on the fourth day we (literally) rolled into Sapa – Rachel ran out of gas just at the top of the hill above town. Luckily, some Vietnamese dude about 100 meters down the road – who for some reason had a bunch of gas in one liter pop bottles – filled her up, so we continued on and made our way down the worst road we encountered in the entire four day stretch from Hanoi to Sapa to our home-stay. That’s where this chapter of our motorcycling story ends. Next up, Sapa.
Some baby goats with mama, Day 4
This hill tribe lady could not get enough of Rachel's nose ring as we were stopping to take photos (notice Rachel's bike laying down in the background, Michael has a really crappy kickstand), Day 4
Spectacular mountain pass on the way into Sapa, Day 4
