Vietnam on a Russian Minsk

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Gasman

Pack Dog
Joined
Oct 26, 2010
Messages
475
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Location
Johannesburg
Bike
Yamaha XT 660 Z
Day 1:
One of my best mates since school left SA after University to go and work in Vietnam for a year, that was 6 years ago. So I thought it would be great to go and visit him in Vietnam and see the country while he is still over there as he should know the ropes after living there all this time. With my girlfriend persuading me that I won’t have this opportunity again, my flights were booked for mid January and I was off to Vietnam to do a bike trip with my best mate for 10 days, it doesn’t get any better than this...
Knowing that we will have to travel light I just packed a day bag with a pair of jeans, couple of shirts, tekkies, flip flops and some other stuff.
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The check-in lady at OR Thambo International was rather confused when I told her I have nothing to check in and only hand luggage on me.
From Joburg to Kuala Lumpur to Hanoi. When I arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam I was expecting it to be humid as hell, but that wasn’t the case. Got myself a taxi and had to first bargain my price down to what I thought was a legit price (not knowing how strong their currency is). Gave the guy the address to my hotel and 45min later we arrived. I couldn’t believe that the taxi driver didn’t crash once or didn’t even kill anyone along the way. And I am use to Joburg traffic!! The Taxi drivers in Joburg will not know what hit them if you drop them off in Hanoi... it is crazy to say the least.
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Dropped my bags off at our hotel (Lucky 3) and waited for Camp to arrive.
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This was the first time we saw each other since our trip through Namibia and Botswana in June 2010. What an awesome feeling to see your mate after such a long time in a weird country and city that you have never been before. First things first, let get a place where we can have a couple of beers, there is catching up to do.
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We quickly had a loose trip planned after a couple of beers and went over to Flamingo Travel where we got some bikes for USD 13.00 a day. These guys are seriously good and I can recommend them if you want to do a trip in Vietnam.
Sorting out the paper work
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These were the beasts that would take us through the country side of Northern Vietnam for the next week or so. 2 Russian Minsks, 125cc, 4 stroke.
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The guys were going to check the bikes out the rest of the day and we could then pick them up the next day. So off to have another couple of beers and talk kark for the rest of the night. The only real planning we did prior to this trip was to decide that I should come during the Tet festival (which is similar to Chinese new year in Vietnam).
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This is a good indication of what the streets look like. And the crazy thing is you just walk and don’t look left or right, because as soon as the people on the scooters make eye contact with you they believe that you will stop or get out of the way. Crazy, but it works.
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We ended up in Le Pub for dinner where two Aussie girls were trying to make conversation, but couldn’t really as they were smashed on Rice Wine. The one stumbled into the road (I seriously thought someone was going to run her over), while the other was sitting at the edge of our table chundering  everywhere. Welcome to Vietnam, where tourists give it their all!

Day 2:
Woke up the next morning feeling sick from the food we had the previous night (not even local food, but Burgers and chips). Walked around Hanoi dodging traffic and had my first Pho meal, which would end up being our staple diet along with coffee for the next week or so.

Taken from the rooftop of our hotel.
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Picking up the bikes from Flamingo Travel. The first time you ride a bike in the city streets of Vietnam, you totally shit yourself. You ride on the right hand side of the road and there are no rules except for “try not to get killed”. We saw a guy who was already in the festive spirit of Tet that was so drunk that he couldn’t keep his scooter up. He fell down against cars and other scooters shouting at the people as if it was their fault, brilliant!
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The guys from Flamingo Travel organised overnight train tickets for us and the bikes to Lao Cai and even dropped our bikes off at the train station as this was on the other side of the city and no one thought it was a good idea to have our introduction ride in Vietnam to be one across Hanoi in the evening as Tet was about to start.
We stopped at the coffee shop across the street from Flamingos before we set off to the train station to start our journey.
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Next thing we knew we were on our way North into the mountainous country side on a train. At the last minute of leaving the station we got a fellow passenger in our cabin who was a local girl on her way to Lao Cai for the festive season. Seeing as she couldn’t speak one word of English, the conversation ran dry rather quickly.
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This is really happening!



 
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