My friend Al and I went on a motorcycle trip to the north a few weeks ago. We were on the road for four days. He had the week off from work and wanted to rent a couple of Minsk motorcycles and get out of town. We planned a route that would take us into the mountains and close to the Chinese border. We picked up the bikes on Wednesday morning and headed out of Hanoi. The traffic was miserable and it took a while before we found the highway we were supposed to be on, but after that, it was smooth sailing to the north.
Here's Al before the trip:
We drove for a better part of the day, making a few stops along the way for beer and cigarettes. By the time we reached Lang Son, we were ready to eat and relax for the evening. We booked a room at a hotel and explored the city.
Lang Son is a simple city with beautiful little mountains surrounding it. The mountains are small but steep and some of them have stairways built into their sides. We climbed a couple of them to get a view of the city.
Al doing the "Top-of-the-World" pose:
Don't these mountains look like a pair of breasts?
The similarity is uncanny!
In the morning we headed north again. This time to a town called Cao Bang. Along the way we took a wrong turn and ended up at the Chinese border.
We found the road again and continued north.
We took a small detour to drive over a few mountain passes and found ourselves on one of the worst roads of the trip. It was under construction and muddy from being soaked by rains from the past few days. We drove in the deep ruts made by trucks but still got stuck several times. The bikes slid around and were hard to control. Luckily the Minsk is made for this kind of terrain and runs well in low gear. We were able to pass the mountain and reconnect with the main road on the other side. It took a lot longer than we had expected.
We came to a river crossing that offered a ferry for trucks and a shitty little bridge for motorbikes. We took the bridge.
It was starting to rain and get dark. We drove as fast as we could to try and beat the darkness but ended up rolling into Cao Bang after sunset. We found a hotel and headed to the local bar. The bar was great. It was a cocktail lounge and real find for any part of Vietnam let alone a weird little town that far north. We drank a few cocktails and then bought a pack of playing cards and headed back to the hotel. We stayed up pretty late drinking and playing cards and then passed out. We had planned to leave early the next morning for another mountain pass road on our way south to Bac Can, but we didn’t wake up until after 9:00 and our hangovers kept us off the road until 11:00.
We drove up a main road to find the mountain pass road. It was a long detour and we knew it was going to take a while. However, when we finally reached the road, it was flooded worse that the other muddy road and impassable. We had been on a wet and foggy road all the way up to this road and knew that this detour was going to be bad. We were literally in the clouds and the ground must have been soaked for weeks. We knew we didn’t have enough time so we had to make a decision; should we keep going west, past this mountain dirt road and reconnect with the main road to Bac Can much later, or do we turn back and count our losses. We knew that if we turned back it would save time, and so we did. We had wasted the best daylight we were going to have and drove 120km out of our way. In Tinh Tuc we turned around and headed back to Cao Bang.
The road to Bac Can was a good one. It was smooth and easy to drive. The view was spectacular too. However, we had run out of time again and arrived in Bac Can in the dark. At this point, we had been driving all day with hardly any stops. We were cold, tired, and hungry. We found a hotel and went for food. It was a well-earned meal and we started to feel like we were coming back to life.
In the morning we actually managed to get up early and head out before 9:00. This made all the difference in the world. We took another detour through another mountain pass road, and although it was just as narrow and unkempt as the muddy roads, it was covered with rocks and easier on the bikes. Nevertheless, it was just as slippery. The bikes performed beautifully and the ride was exciting. The bikes pitched from side to side, bounced up and down and jumped over rocks and ditches. Controlling the sliding and skids was tricky at times but I felt like a dirtbike racer on a well-designed obstacle course.
We reached the town of Thai Nguyen a lot earlier than we expected and realized that we’d be in Hanoi by 5:00. We took our time getting back and stopped for coffee. But this road was a main highway and very busy with traffic heading back to Hanoi, so we just kept up a good pace and let the kilometers pass.
Getting back into Hanoi was no fun. The trip was over and the traffic was totally uninviting. But it was good to be home. We were covered with mud, soaked to the bone, and tired. It made me realize how great it was to be out of town, but just as good to be home.
A ride like this is a great way to clear your head and take in nature. It’s challenging at times and the only thing you can think about is the bike and the terrain, trying to get through a difficult area, to a simple destination. And at other times it’s fast and easy, leaving you to your thoughts.
Here's a map of the trip:
I think if you click on it you can see the details.
