RidingVietnam.com

This trip offers a stunning motorcycling route with great exploration of nature and culture of northern Vietnam. The trip is organized for first time riders and easy adventure travelers.

Motorcycling tour with Activetravel Asia

The legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail was the supply line used by North Vietnam to link North and South Vietnam during the American War. Soldiers, ammunition, and supplies were carried by hand, bicycle and truck for hundreds of kilometers through the otherwise impenetrable jungle that covered Vietnam’s mountainous border with Laos. A testimony to the ingenuity, fortitude and commitment of the northern Vietnamese, the trail slipped from use at the end of the war and was taken back by the jungle. Recent road work that follows original sections of the trail has changed this.

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Continue with Red Spider Group motorcycling 16-day in Vietnam. This entry told their days in the centre and centre highland of Vietnam. Let check it out!

Saturday January 23rd
Today was a day of many experiences. We rode from Dong Ha to A Luoi, via Khe Sanh, the famous and deadly USA base in the mountains of mid Vietnam just south of the DMZ. We started our ride in a shower, then a steady rain and then a downpour. Clearly today was our most challenging ride of the trip in terms of the weather.

Ethnic people village, Khe Sanh, Vietnam

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Series of blog entries from Burrows Red Spider group describe their great 16-day motorcycling trip in Vietnam with ACTIVETRAVEL ASIA. Let’s follow their trip day by day!

Red Spider bikers over the wood bridge

Saturday Jan 16th

They came from London, Birmingham, St. Louis and Chicgao….that gang of Red Spider bikers. All on a mission, to see new things, to meet new people and to have a great adventure and make friends.  Today we made our first new friend….. JOSEF, who took our group picture at O’Hare. So we promised him a spot on the RS Website. We are enjoying our pre-departure time getting to know one another better.

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In colonial days, the mountains surrounding Sapa were known as the Tonkinese Alp for the quasi-European climate, with the town functioning as a former hill station, built by the French as a retreat from the heat for vacationing military officers. It is also home to Vietnam’s highest peak, Mount Fansipan, which towers above the town at a height of 3,143 metres.

Terraced fields, Sapa, Vietnam

Planning a cycling trip in these remote areas of Vietnam as a solo traveller might not be the wisest decision, primarily due to the need for special permits in the less well-discovered areas, but I knew I could do without, having lived for nearly 8 years in Vietnam.

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They grow their crops on the rocks and walk several kilometers of steep, cold mountain roads to buy and sell small goods, but the Mong families on the Dong Van Plateau are some of the most hospitable in the world.

After the long journey, settling into the silence and peace of a stop high mountain road in Ha Giang Province can be an arresting experience.

Family in Ha Giang Province, Vietnam

Vietnam’s northernmost province is located in the northwestern. Hoang Lien Mountains – the Tonkinese Alps as the French called them – near the border with China.
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After cycling, sweating, and occasionally slogging through over 1,600km of SE Asian roads, we’ve experienced more than a few epic rides. While consistently beautiful beaches, the stunning temples at Angkor, and a myriad of rural towns that we’ve cycled through were all certainly impressive and scenic, it’s the challenging hill-climbs that remain the most memorable.Maybe it’s the combination of cool temperatures and great vista views, though perhaps some sort of subtle self-indulgent pseudo-masochism might be closer to the truth. Whichever, one day’s ride has set our cycling benchmark so ridiculously high that we were literally in the clouds: the 140km journey from Da Lat to Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Da Lat is a famed former French hill-station, now a prime honey-moon spot for the Vietnamese, with the prerequisite cable car, flower garden, and kitsch that such a place seems to require. There’s even a hotel-cum-crazy-house, a former imperial mansion in which tourists can play dress-up, and plenty of coffee-shops to while away an entire lifetime. After three days of relaxation and rain-delayed plans, we were certainly ready for what we got: a real cycling adventure.

The day started typically enough, as our hazy directions to the “new road” — which would save us about 100km — involved going past a train station that we never saw. However, all the people along the way kept pointing straight ahead, so without any current maps or any real certainty we proceeded up into the hills. We’d been told that this was not the primary bus route, so we took the lack of traffic to be a comforting fact, and the enthusiastic waves from passing motorists were encouraging. Plus the road actually was new, which made the terrain much more manageable, reassuring us that while we might be cycling into the unknown, it was at least the correct unknown.
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HO CHI MINH HIGHWAY, Vietnam — If relentless American bombing didn’t get him, it would take a North Vietnamese soldier as long as six months to make the grueling trek down the jungled Ho Chi Minh Trail. Today, you speed along the same route at 60 mph, past peaceful hamlets and stunning mountain scenery.

The trail, which played an important role in the Vietnam War, has been added to itineraries of the country’s booming tourist industry. Promoters cash in on its history, landmarks and the novelty of being able to motor, bike or even walk down the length of the country in the footsteps of bygone communist guerrillas.

Women on bicycles make their way along a section of the newly built Ho Chi Minh highway near Vinh,Vietnam. David Longstreath, AP

Many sections of the old trail, actually a 9,940-mile web of tracks, roads and waterways, have been reclaimed by tropical growth. But a main artery has now become the Ho Chi Minh National Highway, probably the country’s best and the largest public works project since Vietnam War ended 30 years ago.

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An eleven-person, a 18-day trip with 11 -day motorcycle trip through Vietnam during the hottest part of the year may sound like an endurance test to some, but for John Kerry, vice president of Motorcycle Travel Club in USA. It’s a vacation.

Motorcycle trip on Ho Chi Minh Trail, Vietnam

From August 30 to September 17, Kerry, two guides and nine others will make the 800-mile journey from Hanoi to Hoi An riding small motorcycles down the country’s eastern coast. A combination of off-road and highway riding, their route will take them to sites such as the Phong Nha Cave, widely hailed as the most beautiful in the region; Hue, the imperial capital of feudal Vietnam; and China Beach, the site of the first major Marine landing of the Vietnam War.

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By far, the best way to experience Vietnam is by motorbike. As with elsewhere in southeast Asia, here, the motorbike is king. They are cheap to buy, easy to repair, and they can take you places the tour bus would never dare to go. What’s more, there are no restrictions on foreigners buying motorbikes. All you need is a passport and valid visa, and you’ll receive a title of ownership and a deed of transfer. Rentals will suffice for most, but if you plan on serious bike time, buying is more economical — you can even sell the bike before you leave and recoup most of the expense.

We know the traffic seems crazy. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll learn there is a method to the madness. Travel by motorbike has its dangers, to be sure, and should be undertaken conscientiously. But the vast majority of foreigners come away from their motorbike trek with nothing but great experiences to talk about back home (and maybe a few tail-pipe burns to remember them by).

Vietnam Motorcycling Travel Guide

You can buy a bike almost anywhere, but bigger cities will have a better selection and be more comfortable selling to foreigners. Naturally, it’s best to shop around. When you settle on a bike, insist on taking it for a spin — and to a mechanic for a once over.

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Motorbike trip is wonderful for those who have good health and like more adventure in their travels. Bike tours to the rugged region offer a more direct experience of the life of its people.

It is probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but discovering Vietnam’s rugged and scenic northwest on a motorbike is more than an exhilarating experience.

Motorcycle tours in Northwest Vietnam

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