Viet Road Trip Day 24

Viet Road Trip is a blog series about my solo scooter trip through Viet Nam. This is day 24. Day 23 can be found here.

---

he immigration office in Ha Giang informed me that I wouldn't be able to extend my visa. That left me with about 5 days to get to the Laotian border. It was plenty of time, but the looming deadline made me feel like I needed to hurry.

The riding was still beautiful, and I was still enjoying the trip, but the sense of urgency took some of the joy out of the riding.

Leaving Ha Giang.

hile hurrying to get to my next stop, I almost crashed my bike. The scene looked very similar to the video above.

I was rushing past all of the locals, and I didn't slow down as I went through a small town. A person going in the same direction as me had stopped to buy something from a vendor. As I approached, the person concluded their business and made a U-Turn without looking. I was going too fast and slammed on my breaks and turned my handle bar. The wheels locked up and the scooter started to slide sideways out from under me. I put one foot down quickly to keep my balance and released the hand brake. The tires regained traction and I was able to bring the bike to a complete stop on the opposite side of the road, inches from a parked vehicle.

The guy that I almost crashed into just looked at me and smiled. I used all of my energy to not yell at him. It was my fault, but I wasn't ready to be mad at me yet. Instead, I just checked for traffic and went on my way.

If you ever ride scooters anywhere, slow down in towns and villages.

I like the driveway for this house.

Bringing home the bacon.

Running for the border.

omewhere between the photo above and the photo below, I found a place to sleep. I don't recall where I slept on the first night. It was in a hotel, but I don't have any photos and it wasn't memorable.

Nothing special here.

A different way to change oil. This thing sucks the oil out instead of draining it from the bottom.

A nice ride along the river.

Hòa Bình, Vietnam

stayed in Hoa Binh for 2 nights. I wasn't in a hurry to get back to Laos and I wanted to use up as much of my Vietnamese visa as possible. I was also hoping that I could find a mechanic to fix my bike.

A few days earlier, my motorbike had started making a concerning knocking noise. The noise was definitely coming from the engine, but it didn't seem to be affecting performance. In the lower ends of my gears, the engine would sound like it was tearing itself apart. If I kept the engine revved up, the noise would go away.

I stopped at several mechanics to see if it was fixable. They all smiled and shook their heads.

I started my ride to the border worried that my bike would break down. I wasn't sure what the customs fee would be to bring the bike across the border, but I was planning on abandoning the bike if the fee was more than $25. I honestly didn't think the bike was worth much more than that. As far as I knew, the engine needed replacing. The bike never broke down on that day, but the sound got progressively worse and my anxiety and frustration grew.

The ride started with a road that wasn't too bad. Unfortunately for me, I rode 20 kilometers down that "not too bad" road before realizing that I'd made a wrong turn and needed to backtrack. It was already going to be one of my longest days of riding, and now I'd added an extra 40 kilometers to it.

I got on the right track and discovered that a big portion of my route was an active construction zone. There were dump trucks, steamrollers, tractors, dust, dust, and more dust. The ground that they were digging up was a super fine talcum-like powder. The temperature was over 100 degrees and the ground was dry. It was easy to get your wheels stuck in the soft dirt.

20% more tang! I needed that tang to keep my spirits up on my ride.

A moth that I spotted at the border while I was waiting for my visa to be printed.

fter my hardest day of riding, I made it to the border. The customs fee for the motorbike was reasonable (around $20). There were only a few people crossing the border so there weren't any lines and getting my visa for Laos was easy.

I was coated in dust, exhausted, and I still had over an hour more of riding ahead of me. I'm sure this is just a trick of memory, but I swear that when I crossed the border into Laos, the sky turned orange and ash started falling from the sky. It was burning season in Laos and it looked, felt, and smelled like I'd crossed the border into hell. Parts of my return to Laos were indeed hellish, but that's a post for another day.

I do plan on continuing with this series for a few more posts, but I'm calling this the official end of my Viet Road Trip. I kept the motorbike for another 3 months, but the road trip that I'd started a month earlier was over.

---

---

Viet Road Trip is a blog series about my solo scooter trip through Vietnam. Read about days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 8.1, 9, 9.1, 10, 11,12, 13, 14, 15-17, 18, 19, 20-21, 22, and 23 here.