Exploring Vietnam: The Benefits and Advantages of Motorcycle Travel

The hustle and bustle of its cities, the varied and picturesque countryside, the vibrant cultures throughout its regions – Vietnam is truly a fascinating place to travel. A popular way to get around, and often the most convenient, to one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world is by motorcycle. In this article we will take a closer look at some of the benefits and advantages of two-wheeled travelling in Vietnam.

If you travel in Vietnam by motorcycles instead of car, bus or train, you will open up a world of flexibility and freedom that is otherwise closed. Whether it be in Hanoi, or in the city of 18 million, Ho Chi Minh City, you’ll be able to effortlessly pass through traffic. You will ride past crawling cars and buses and may arrive at your destination earlier. On the coastal highway of Da Nang, the motorcycle will enable you to negotiate sharp turns as you ride through hills and valleys.

Motorcycle travel gives that kind of immersion into the country – beyond just being swift and cost-effective. It means driving through small villages, lush countryside and other picturesque spots – eating where the locals eat, staying with locals, and learning all about the Vietnamese culture from the inside.

And, of course, motorcycle tours are inexpensive – rentals are reasonably priced, in many cases, and driving means cheap petrol relative to both renting a car and taxis. And there’s the adventure of it all: climbing steep mountain roads, cruising down open highways, and finding new back trails.

To sum up, if you are ready to try two-wheeled travel, choose Vietnam. Motorcycle riding promises you a whole new world of travel. It makes you feel excited and immerses you into this special country. Whether you are travelling solo or on a motorcycle tour, your life on two wheels will never be forgotten.

1. Flexibility and Freedom:

Riding a motorcycle in Vietnam is the ultimate in freedom of travel and flexibility. There is no other way to be in complete control of your day. If you take an organised tour by motorbike, you don’t decide where to stop for the day, when or how long, nor do you have the ability to deviate from your guide according to your whims. Likewise, if you use public transport, you are firmly on the prescribed schedule of the transport companies. You don’t decide when you get there, whether you stay there, or where you go today. You cannot take detours from the main roads, and you have little time at each place. A healthy travelling speed is always too slow for the guides. Riding a motorcycle, on the other hand, puts you in complete control of your destination.

Such flexibility is essential in Vietnam, where there are so many great places if you get off the beaten tourist tracks. On a motorbike you can wend your way through villages, up and down various back roads, and come upon landscapes and sites not yet spoiled for the masses.

In addition, moving at your own pace means you can immerse much more deeply in the country’s cultures and heritage. Chatting with villagers at a cafe or stumbling upon a pot-bellied village elder bashing out the bamboo percussion at a traditional festival are just some of the spontaneous encounters that motorcycle travel here enables.

To sum up, travelling by motorbike in Vietnam helps you getting an adventurous and memorable experience. So let your engine start and follow the road. The wind can bring the inspiration.

2. Navigate Traffic with Ease:

Moving around in Vietnam’s major cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City could be a nightmare with the huge number of private cars on the roads. However, the growing number of motorcycles, both in terms of ownership and use, offers an inarguable advantage in terms of moving more easily through traffic jams.

With a motorbike you can weave in between the cars on the crowded streets of Vietnam. While buses and cars struggle to get through narrow alleyways, motorbikes can get through quickly and efficiently. They are also much quicker through traffic jams than cars. Motorbikers can drive between cars, squeeze into tight spaces and bypass the long queues, which helps them get to their destination fast as possible.

Furthermore, the freedoms that motorcycle travel provides are especially apparent along his country’s heaving, traffic-choked arteries. ‘When you ride a scooter, you can always keep moving at a comfortable speed, adaptable to all circumstances,’ he explains. ‘You can filter through gridlock better than a car, overtake people on the inside, squeeze past pedestrians and crowds, [and] go round obstructions that cause snarl-ups.’ Traffic light trouble? Not on a bike. Worried about what the weatherman is telling you, ahead to your destination? Not on a bike. Falling behind schedule? Not on a bike. That shaking Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell on the seat-back of a bus while navigating the wrong side of the road, while thinking you’re in a 50 Shades of Grey movie? Not on a bike.

In short, riding a motorbike in Vietnam presents both a practical way to move through and around the urban tide – and a way to increase the intensity of your travel moment – your connection with your surroundings amplifies as your body on a motorbike carves its way through the city between cars and pedestrians. So, be a two-wheeled traveller, and let the streets of Vietnam be your playground on two wheels as you filter through the urban canopy of life.

3. Immersive Cultural Experience:

You’re plunged into the very heart of Vietnamese culture, but in a way you couldn’t quite imagine until you actually get on that bike. You’ll start seeing Vietnam with new eyes. Because your means of travel became the focus of your journey, you end up deeply involved in Vietnamese culture, not just acknowledging its existence from afar, but embodied and engaged in the day-to-day lives of the people you meet. Travel by motorbike is, in other words, also about travel into time.

It’s not the same if you’ve got to spend ages on a bus, or wait around for hostel transfers. If you’re on a motorbike, you can stop at the side of the road chatting to fruit vendors in their markets. You can roam around the stalls and then dash into a little eatery to taste a few authentic Vietnamese dishes: some freshly grilled banh mi on the streets of Hanoi; a big bowl of aromatic pho… all in the style of a novice.

Sticking to motorbike travel in rural villages not only presents you with endless opportunities (and just as many invitations) to interact with warm and welcoming local people, but it also affords the chance to forge human connections with native peoples you might otherwise have never met. Strangers become friends as you chat with villagers and enjoy some brewed Vietnamese coffee or literally work the fields, harvesting rice or throwing nets in a fishpond.

And on a motorbike you get an intimate cinematic view of daily life passing by: you drive through the rice paddies, over the forested mountains, down to the beach, and watch archetypal rural life unfolding in front of you: farmers working their fields, children running out to the road for a hello, grandparents sitting under the old banyans in the village sharing stories.

Put simply, to travel by motorbike in Vietnam, is to experience the country at its most visceral, its most intimate, and its most profound. Start up your bike, and hit the road. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

4. Scenic Routes and Breathtaking Landscapes:

There is a reason that those crop-dusting airplanes sprayers fly slowly over Vietnam’s rice fields, and that’s because everything here is a picture-postcard view, from diverse terrains of highlands to mountains and the pristine coastlines. If you want to experience its scenic roads away from smog and honking cars, have the chance to enjoy that view up-close and become one with nature as well as with that steampunk Harley overtaking you, riding a motorbike is the way for you to go.

The race starts in the countryside, where green rice steps run for several kilometres along gentle valleys. In the first climbs to the mountains, you see huge ridges with vertigo-inducing views, but the paths are wide and well-paved. The challenge lies in the roller coaster descent which ends in the world’s quickest U-turn.

Inland, perfectly smooth asphalt invited faster speeds and crested hills at every turn, well-cared-for cattle grazed, and pristine beaches and ocean views beck shore became the song that rang in our ears as we rode along the coast, their melodic music bringing a sense of twilight and refuge.

Moreover, the motorcycle’s mobility, with its ability to twist and turn, slow down and speed up, means the rider is more likely to discover things – a waterfall hidden in the jungle, a beach tucked into a hidden cove – than if he were restricted to his own pace on a bus. With every curve of the road comes a new view and a new shot at excitement.

In fact, travelling on two wheels through those mesmerising landscapes rewards the senses and enriches the spirit, as every mile brings new landscapes and highlights to stun the grey matter and store for eternity.

5. Cost-Effective Travel:

Motorcycle travel is a great option to explore Vietnam as it is more affordable than taking a taxi or hiring a car. Travel allows us to connect with local cultures to experience authentic lifestyles.

Motorbike rentals are available in every big city and tourist destination in Vietnam and the price of a rental offers an option for every budget. You can find anything up to a Honda XR200 – a big and powerful bike that screams ‘I’m a European backpacker to the core!’ – and everything in between.

Secondly – and this is undoubtedly a decisive deciding factor – fuel costs are very low. A highway bike or scooter will use much less fuel (at around half the cost) than a larger vehicle, allowing you to extend your travel budget beyond the cities and into the scenic heartlands of the country, where diverse landscapes and natural attractions await.

Besides, parking for motorcycle is much easier to get, for example in city area, there is very limited space, it can take a long time to find a park space there, while the motorcycle will take much less time to find the park space and get to the destination. The motorcyclist can save a lot of time and money for not paying the parking space.

Overall, motorbiking in Vietnam is cheap and the best way to have a tense, pulsating experience in the country. If you tour Vietnam on a motorbike, you will penetrate into the fabulous culture and unforgettable beautiful scenes during your trip as well. So, wherever you go, whether you ride alone or join a group of guys, roll your motorbike on the road to cover square kilometres of this exotic country without spending fortune.

6. Thrilling Adventure:

In Vietnam, however, motorcycle riding is something quite different. It is an adventure. And so, sitting on a motorcycle in Vietnam offer the adventure seekers a chance to explore the country that is known to have astonishing landscapes that his adrenalin-addict always dreamt of. Thus it is an experience that a person cannot have anywhere else.

Imagine you are driving in your car along a single-lane, mountainous road, your car hugging steep cliff edges on the one side and opening up to breathtaking vistas on the other. Your speedometer ticks up and up as you encounter curvave upon sweeping curvave, the sheer glee of freedom and victory imbued with every completed hairpin.

But the experience isn’t over. The coastal highways also take riders along on-shore coastal roadways. Your senses are filled with the fresh scent of the salt sea, the crisp sea breeze in your hair, and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. You twist and cut the curvy coastal roads, or else take a break and take in the views of the ocean.

And for those looking for a sense of being in the wild, trekking in remote parts of Vietnam was the ultimate rush. Deep into the forests, up on to the mountains, the only rule was that there were no set rules; every remote destination meant untouched territory, a camouflaged waterfall, a trail less trodden.

Put simply, it is through the act of riding a motorbike in Vietnam that one experiences the exhilaration of the journey and the merging with the environment. Load up your ride – spirits included – and experience Vietnam’s primordial energy.

Riding a motorcycle in Vietnam sculptures for you an experience in which you involve yourself in the ride, you open up to an entire world of options … Riding a motorcycle in Vietnam gives you great benefits and privileges, a freedom which suits every adventurer’s needs. The slow pace, the freedom to go wherever and whenever you desire, an ability to stop when you please, including knowing you can stop anytime; the freedom to plan where you stay. You can select a guesthouse, with a private room, in a sleepy village as comfortable and convenient as you desire. Maybe you want to stay longer and explore? No worries. It is up to you! The pace is slow; don’t worry about missing the train. Want to turn off the road? Want to walk beneath towering mountains into the tropical jungles? Don’t worry about missing the train, because if you have time, you can then turn back, too. The motorbike allows you to go places other vehicles cannot.

 Furthermore, you get a kind of braille navigation of cities and landscapes that’s uniquely visceral when you’re inside it, moving, speeding, swerving, weaving through traffic in the city, through tunnels underneath it, up hills skirting the edges of it, through wave upon wave of other motorbikes, and then pushing through it for a moment to roll down perfectly clear stretches of road, lined by trees and fields flashing past you at speed, the smell of high summer, of soybeans roasting, of fuel and black rubber grinding and burning – a constant carnival of sensory delights. You get a different alpha-beta distinction: normal life on the road versus getting out of town, multiplied tenfold on a motorbike that dives and swoops through traffic the way a big bike can’t, or if the road running out isn’t curving and sweeping hillsides but is instead a staid four-lane highway bordered by trucks and SUVs, out there you’re on your own, in the big sea, hands loosely gripping the bars, muscles taut under your skin, eyes sweeping rhythmically from side to side for little gaps in traffic, for wave after wave after perfect wave, feeling like you own the world.

Whether you make the trip alone or sign up for a motorcycle tour group, whether you go to Vietnam during wet or dry season, whether you travel a few days or several weeks, whether you cross just a province or the entire country, whether you choose to ride before you drive, whether you cycle with friends or make new ones along the way, the prospect of two-wheeled travel in Vietnam is filled with the promise of good memories and new experiences. Whether you ride from North to South, from South to North, or in circular directions, as you shift from speed to slowness, from the familiar to the exotic, as you meander around exquisite curves and begin to master the art of balancing and swerving on motorbikes, you will learn something about life and about travel as you come to terms with the roads and the traffic of Vietnam.

Ultimately, riding a motorbike in Vietnam is a travel experience, an exploration, a celebration of liberty and an adventure in itself. Zag it snarl, shimmy or breathe, get on a bike; and get out there.

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