I could blame the lack of updates on the fact that I wanted to keep the bikes a secret from my parents so that they wouldn’t worry but that isn’t true. I didn’t tell them about the bikes but the lack of blog is just laziness.
Anyway back to the story after a lot of boring waiting around we eventually secured ourselves two 100cc Honda Win copies (apparently all the Wins in Vietnam are copies since Honda stopped making them over 10 years ago) for the sum of $400 each; the most expensive present I have ever bough anyone! This price did, however, include a full day of tuition on how to ride a manual bike and how to ride in Vietnam. Plus mine was 10 years old and had only 559.3km on the clock; definitely believable!!!
We spent a short amount of time studying the one page tourist map we were going to use to navigate Vietnam. After 5 minutes planning a vague route for the first few days between Hanoi and Hue we set off around the craziness that are the city roads in search of some protective clothing. We had already found full face helmets for only £13 but wanted some trousers and hopefully a jacket each. After being laughed out of most shops for wanting to protect ourselves we eventually found that we could just about afford some trousers each so we bought them to at least have something.
By the time we had organised strapping our bags down and were ready to leave it was already after 1 and our early start was clearly out of the window. It was also obvious that the roads became even worse as we left the old district of the city. A small taste of the madness is in the video below complete with awesome starwipe transitions! The city and the heavy traffic seemed to be going on indefinitely and we were beginning to wonder if we would even make it out of Hanoi before it went dark (we had decided we wouldn't be as stupid and reckless as top gear and wouldn't ride in the rain or after dark).
Eventually we did make it out of the mayhem and onto some open roads. Whilst this was good for having scenery to look at it didn't do much for the safety and we soon learnt the nature of the highways in Vietnam. There are basically 3 road laws:
- If it is bigger than you it has right of way (this applies to both sides of the road so just because you are there don't think a coach won't overtake a truck and drive head-on towards you, it is not your lane you are only borrowing it).
- If it is coming from your right it has right of way (so at every junction Vietnamese will ride or drive blindly out of side streets at full speed without looking).
- If it is in front of you it is your problem (so other road users may stop, turn or randomly swerve about the road (usually drunk or texting whilst riding) but they will never check their mirrors first).
We stopped for lunch at one of the many Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) shops that lined the roads. As we were sitting and watching the road we witnessed our first bike crash; 2 bikes came together as a van cut them up and drove off. One of the guys was left on the floor but within seconds people had appeared to help him and in less than 2 minutes he was off on the road again. We finished our day after disappointingly covering only just over 70km! Stopping in a random little town we had our first taste of tourist free Vietnam. Unfortunately this also seemed to mean restaurant free Vietnam and so we again ended up eating noodle soup... a pattern was beginning to emerge here! Though the town appeared to have no restaurants the same could not be said for dentists with every other shop seeming to contain one. The most curious thing about this was that they were occupying "high street" style shop fronts with glass windows so that you could see into (and take pictures of) the surgeries!
The speedo shot at the end of the first day disappointingly short day:
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