Motorcycle Touring

Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi: 2,700 km on the Wrong Bike

Contributed by Cameron Sim

30 June 2026

Vietnam

Twelve stages up the length of Vietnam on a motorbike I should never have bought, from Saigon to Hanoi via Đà Lạt, Măng Đen, the Ho Chi Minh Road and Ninh Bình. First time in Asia, first proper trip, and mostly solo until it wasn't.

Distance

2700

Days

20

Stages

12

Difficulty

8

This was my first time in Asia and the first big travelling thing I'd ever done. I'd wanted to do it for years, mostly because of the Top Gear Vietnam special, but I wanted the full run rather than a highlights reel. Asia also just felt properly different to Europe and South Africa, which is all I knew.

Credit where it's due: a friend gave me the idea and a load of advice before I went. His main advice was to rent a bike from Style Motorbikes. I ignored that, decided to buy my own, and specifically tried to buy the cheapest bike I could find.

I bought a Honda Detech off a Belgian guy in a hostel in Saigon for $250. He'd just finished the run down from Hanoi. That decision shaped the entire first half of this trip, and not in a good way. I sold it in Hội An for $60 and rented from Style Motorbikes like I should have done on day one.

I was nervous about talking to people at the start, which you get over quickly. I spent a day getting used to riding in Saigon traffic, which is completely mental, and put a message out on Hostelworld and a few Facebook groups looking for someone to ride with. A guy replied, we met up, and he was up for riding out together. Much nicer bike than mine, which would turn out to matter..

2,700 km in the end. South to north.

Stage 1: Ho Chi Minh City to Nam Cát Tiên

Distance

193

Accommodation

Forest Side Homestay

First thing on the morning we'd agreed to leave, my bike wouldn't start. gnition coil, completely gone. So my first act of this trip was messaging a guy I'd met the night before to say sorry, can we push our start back, because we'd deliberately planned an early one to duck the traffic and now I was going nowhere.

Off to the mechanic. I definitely paid tourist tax on it. I did not know at the time that this was the opening instalment of a long and expensive relationship with Vietnamese mechanics.

The ride out of Saigon is hectic. Highway turnoffs, loops, bikes everywhere, trucks. Intense the whole way. We stopped for lunch somewhere I can't remember and it only really started to calm down towards the end of the day.

Nam Cát Tiên itself was good. Forest Side Homestay is worth a stay, the food was good, and we did a riverside boat tour that was well worth doing.

Then the bit that stung. My bike had been playing up all day and I'd been holding him up, riding much slower than he wanted to. That evening he said he'd rather ride on his own from here. Totally his right, he wanted to do his own thing, and we're fine about it now. At the time it shook me. He'd been my backup. If something went wrong, he could call someone, he could get help. Now it was me and a bike that kept dying.

Stage 2: Nam Cát Tiên to Đà Lạt

Distance

274

Accommodation

Tigon Dalat Hostel

I left really early and rode it alone.

It was a good ride. Coming up into Đà Lạt is properly pretty and feels different to the rest of Vietnam, quainter, a bit odd in a nice way. I remember riding with my music on and never having felt that free before.

Tigon was an oasis. After a rough opening to Vietnam I could not believe the place. A dollar a night. The bed was a mattress on the floor in a little compartment, but it did the job, and the hostel itself was clean, well kept, good view, decent common area. Food was dirt cheap. I stayed two nights.

Stage 3: Đà Lạt to Nha Trang

Distance

140

Accommodation

Marilyn Nha Trang Hotel

I was packing my bag when I got chatting to an English guy and a woman from New Zealand who were headed to Nha Trang the same day, so I rode with them. Good people, easy day, we had lunch by the river.

The pass is the Khánh Lê, sometimes called the Hòn Giao or the Omega, on the QL27C. It's beautiful. Waterfalls, thick green, forest the whole way down. Watch for landslides, there's evidence of them everywhere.

They'd booked somewhere else so I got my own hotel. Nha Trang is a bigger coastal Vietnamese city. Walked around, ate, nothing remarkable.

Stage 4: Nha Trang to Quy Nhơn

Distance

300

Accommodation

Lux Quy Nhon Homestay, then Life's A Beach at Bãi

Back on my own and a bit stressed.

The main thing to say about this day is that I took the coastal road for a stretch, which is the QL1A, and you should not do this under any circumstances. It's trucks flying past you the entire time with no room to breathe and it's about as unpleasant as riding gets. There is genuinely nothing to be gained from it.

The bike had also started giving me battery trouble by this point, in that sometimes it started and sometimes it didn't and there was no discernible logic to which. I went straight to a mechanic when I got in and he fixed it, though I still couldn't tell you what was actually wrong. The first half of the day had been perfectly nice, and I'd set off expecting a calm one, which was optimistic of me.

I took a rest day after that and moved a bit further down the coast to Bãi Bàng, to Life's A Beach, because I fancied trying somewhere different and had no interest in getting back on the bike for anything serious.

Stage 5: Măng Đen to Hội An

Distance

239

Accommodation

Hoian Nostalgia Hotel & Spa

The bike wouldn't start. Again.

What I remember most about that morning isn't the bike, though, it's the people. Locals who had absolutely no reason to get involved spent twenty minutes trying to push start it with me, and when that got nowhere, another guy came out of his house and offered to push me to the mechanic, and then actually did it, pushing me on my bike using his own bike. All told it took about two hours of pushing, downhill, uphill, downhill, uphill, to get there. Burnt spark plug which was sorted by the mechanic.

Toward the end of the day coming into Hội An, the bike started choking, and I mean choke choke choke, then go go go go go, then choke choke choke again, then off it went, over and over for a solid forty minutes, with no mechanics and no shops and no villages and nothing at all around me. I properly thought I was going to end up stranded out there, because I couldn't even have pushed it anywhere useful if it had died completely.

I did make it to Hội An, where my accommodation had fallen through, so the lady sent me somewhere else and could not have been more helpful about the whole thing. While she was helping me I asked whether she happened to know anyone who might buy a motorbike, because by that point I had comprehensively had enough.

Bought for $250, sold for $60. Rinsed at both ends of the transaction with real style. I did not care even slightly.

I rented a Suzuki from Style Motorbikes, which is probably what I should have done on day one, and from that moment to the end of the trip I did not see the inside of a single workshop.

Hội An is also where the Top Gear guys had their suits made, and the actual shop is still there. Worth a look if you're interested.

Stage 6: Quy Nhơn to Măng Đen

Distance

239

Accommodation

Sum Villa Homestay

This day was beautiful, and it was one of the best of the whole trip.

Măng Đen is the prettiest town I saw in Vietnam by a distance, all cherry blossom and quiet and lovely to just be in for a while. Sum Villa is a traditional Vietnamese homestay and you stay with the family, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Stage 7: Hội An to HUE

Distance

239

A short one, and a famous one.

You go north out of Hội An through Đà Nẵng and then onto the Hải Vân itself, which is only about 21 km long. Down the other side you drop into Lăng Cô, where the road runs along the sandbar between the sea and the Lập An lagoon, which is genuinely the best looking bit of the whole day, and then it's lagoon and rice fields the rest of the way into Huế.

The Hải Vân is pretty. Top Gear called it a deserted ribbon of perfection, and everyone repeats that at you until you've ridden it. But I'll say it, it's slightly overrated, and I rode better roads than that on this trip without anyone making the slightest fuss about them.

Stage 8: HUE to Khe Sanh

Distance

171

Accommodation

Khe Sanh Luxury Hotel

On the way out of Huế I spotted a South African guy riding along with his Vietnamese girlfriend on the back, flagged them down, asked if I could tag along, and ended up riding a few hours with them down some beautiful roads along the river.

By the time I got to Khe Sanh I was completely wrecked, tired and drained and actually a bit ill with it, so I got in early, went down to grab some food, went straight back up to my room, and sat there doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day.

Khe Sanh itself is nothing special. It's a stop on the Ho Chi Minh Road and that's about the size of it.

Stage 9: Khe Sanh to Phong Nha

Distance

171

Accommodation

Green Riverside Cosy Home

My favourite day of riding on the trip.

I set off with a French couple in their sixties from Toulouse, Sylvia and Luc, who rode fairly slowly but who I was very grateful to have, because that road is empty and I was not too keen to ride on my own. The conditions were rough, thick fog, rain and a lot of wind, so slow was fine by me.

Then two bikes came flying past us with Vietnamese plastic stools strapped to their luggage, looking like they'd packed in the dark during a house fire.

But I was riding with Sylvia and Luc and I didn't want to be rude about it, so I stayed where I was, and we spent the next while leapfrogging each other, them getting lost, us going past, them coming back through again. Eventually, after a few hours and a lunch with the French. I said as politely as I possibly could that I was going to head off and try to catch the other two.

And then I absolutely sent it down the Ho Chi Minh Road after them. They'd stopped at a bridge for a break to take a photo and chill for a bit, which is probably the only reason I ever caught them. I pulled up and introduced myself and asked if I could ride with them.

Best decision I made on the whole trip. Steve and Tim, and I rode with them the rest of the way to Hanoi and ended up going to Thailand with them afterwards.

The riding after that was curvy, endless and brilliant, with big hills and mountains opening up on the way into Phong Nha. Riding in a group made a bigger difference to how I felt than anything else on this trip.

Phong Nha is pretty, a little touristy but still quaint, and I did some caving and cave tours while I was there that were really nice. That night we ended up sitting with a circle of local men who were absolutely hammered and singing karaoke, as Vietnamese men do, and they fed us and poured us rice wine out of a plastic bottle. Chúc mừng năm mới became the catchphrase of the trip from there on.

Stage 10: Phong Nha to Vinh

Distance

234

Accommodation

Muong Thanh Vinh Hotel

Another good ride, and another pretty one.

Vinh was the least touristy city we went to. It got hit extremely hard during the American War and was largely rebuilt afterwards, and my honest read was that Westerners get a slightly cooler reception there than they do elsewhere, though that might just have been us.

We found a pool hall and played with some local teenagers, which was a great laugh, and then ate an absolutely obscene amount of KFC, having stumbled across the first one of the trip.

Stage 11: Vinh to Ninh Bình

Distance

225

Accommodation

Green Mountain Homestay

This day felt like playing an 80s arcade game.

You spend the whole thing overtaking cars, weaving through, pushing forward, taking one on the left and then one on the right and then another one, constantly, for hours, with the adrenaline going the entire time. Hectic in every sense of the word, and I loved it.

Coming into Ninh Bình is lovely and we stayed two nights, did some night riding around the area, went out on the boats, did the usual touristy bits. Good place.

Stage 12: Ninh Bình to Hanoi

Distance

236

The last day, and I was sad and happy about it in roughly equal measure.

Steve and I had a wholesome moment with one percent of the whole thing left, the final 2.7 km of 2,700, where we pulled over and had a hug.

We had a few beers to celebrate, found another very cool pool hall where all the kids were dressed like gangsters, spent a couple days exploring and then the three of us went off to Thailand.