Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City Motorbike Trip: Day 1 - Hanoi to Yen Cat

This is journal for my motorcycle trip form Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City beginning January 25, 2014. The trip took 16 days and the total distance travelled was 2,576 km. The bike I rode was a Yamaha Taurus SR.

On the morning of the day I left, I took care of a couple last minute preparations. I packed clean laundry and collected a few items. I got out my full faced motorbike helmet which I don’t usually use in Hanoi because it makes it difficult to hear the traffic. Hearing is important for driving in Hanoi because horns are used to communicate where you are and where other people are. I was glad I brought it because it provided safety and because it protected my face from the cold, dirty road.

Before I left, I checked in with my landlord, Phuong, and she gave me two banh chung cakes for the road. Banh chung is a square, sticky rice brick with pork and green beans in the center, boiled, and wrapped in lá dong leaves (or, in a pinch, banana leaves). It is traditionally eaten during the New Year’s Holiday, Tet holiday. It’s a good traveling food because it packs well and it doesn’t go bad.

I packed all my luggage onto my motorbike using a ratchet strap and bungee cords and left the house. My first stop was at the bank where I got money from the ATM. I took out 4 million dong and added it to the million I had in my wallet already.

Then I went to get gas. Of course I had to take all of my luggage off the bike in order to reach the gas tank under the seat. It would have been better to fill up with gas the night before I left.

As I set off out of town, there was a lot of traffic because of Tet holiday. Everyone was leaving town to go visit their families in the countryside. I was stuck in traffic for about an hour before I got out of town and got moving. It was 11:30am by the time I got out of Hanoi and onto the highway.

The weather was foggy, cloudy, and damp. It was a little bit chilly, but not too bad. I got onto Tay Son Street and followed it all the way out of Hanoi and toward my target destination for the day, which was the town of Cam Thuy, 128 kilometers from Hanoi.

On the way to Cam Thuy I was supposed to take a turn from the highway I was on to get onto the Ho Chi Minh Highway. I didn’t study the details of where I needed to turn very carefully because I didn’t want to spend a lot of effort on planning.

I noticed a restaurant where I had eaten with my friend Le and his dad 10 months previously when we were on our way back to Hanoi from Mai Chau. We had gone to pick up the motorbike that I had crashed in December 2012. It had been seized by the police.

When I noticed the restaurant, I started to question my position because I didn’t think it was on my intended route. I took out my phone and used Google maps to figure out that was 11 kilometers past where I should have turned. Luckily it was a painless mistake. I was listening to music while I was driving and 11 kilometers went by in about 4 songs.

There were some crazy people on the road. There was one guy who was leaning over the front of his motorbike’s handlebars and he started swerving back an fourth when I got near him. He almost came all the way across my lane and hit me as I was passing. I honked my horn and he turned away at the last second.

Sometimes buses and oncoming cars drove on my side of the road and forced me to get out of my lane and onto the shoulder of the road or else they would hit me in a head-on collision. That was scary.

Other than that the driving was good, especially after I was on the Ho Chi Minh Highway. The road was good, the shoulder was wide and the right-of-way was relatively clear. The scenery was nice as I went through small towns, rice fields, and some mountainous areas that were really beautiful to travel through. The visibility was not clear but it was good enough so that I could see the mountains around me.

When I reached my target destination, Cam Thuy, I was hungry so I stopped and ate some phở. I had already decided that I would drive further before I found a place to stop for the night.

When I pulled up to the phở restaurant, there were only a few places to park. I squeezed in between 2 other motorbikes. The bike to my left was barely balancing on it’s kickstand and it was top heavy with a lot of luggage. I bumped it lightly as I was getting my bike situated. It fell over and crashed onto the ground. The Vietnamese girl who owned the bike and was eating phở ran over and I helped her pick it up. Nothing was broken. I repositioned her bike so it would balance better and it wasn’t so easy to knock over. I said sorry. It was embarrassing.

I decided I would ride to a town called Yen Cat because the name sounded cool to me. I kept riding and made it to Yen Cat before it got dark. I found a hotel quickly and walked around the town for about 30 minutes. I bought some water and cilantro to eat with the banh chung cakes for dinner. There were a lot of trees with tiny oranges to celebrate Tet holiday. I ate several oranges from these trees though they were really sour.

I had a nice moment when I came back to the hotel and asked if I could eat my banh chung cake in the restaurant area of the hotel. The dad of the family helped me to prepare the banh chung and gave me some fresh vegetables to eat with it. It turned out to be pretty good and there was enough left over for breakfast.

I planned to go to Dong Hoi the next day. It was 395km, a long ride, but it would be a good place to stay and I would be positioned to reach Hue the next day.