Motoring through Nam part I: The Cobra

A bit of info about Vietnam’s road map:

Highway 1 (also called the A1 or QL1) is Vietnam’s major highway which runs North-South along the coast. For the most part the A1 is only a two lane road, crammed with cars and Mack Trucks, so there’s lots of dangerous passing. Cars and trucks coming from the opposite direction are rarely considerate as they pass slower autos, meaning that it is the responsibility of the biker to dodge cars or trucks barreling down on them, even if those cars or trucks are on the wrong side of the road. Basically there are no rules, and even if there were, they’d be of little use once you’ve been run over. I learned very quickly to get the hell out of the way when cars and trucks were on my side of the road, for their refusal to slow down was an indication, a crystal clear one, of how little they cared for my well-being. Driving on the A1 requires constant vigilance, not to mention inhaling tons of exhaust and bracing for debris kicked in our direction. In my life I have experienced cliff jumping, helicopter lessons, skydiving, the world’s highest bungee jump, and cage-diving with great whites at Seal Island. Driving on the A1 easily takes the cake as the most precarious, death defying endeavor of them all. Needless to say, avoiding this highway was priority number one, though it was unavoidable sometimes.

The Ho Chi Minh trail is Vietnam’s other major North-South route, more inland, rural, winding, mountainous. In contrast, there was seldom traffic on the Ho Chi Minh and when there was it was manageable. We often had the entire road to ourselves, we could check out passing scenery (the whole point of buying the bikes), plug in headphones and crank the tunes, stop whenever we felt like it to take pictures. A true pleasure.

We got a big of a late start on the first day which became a recurrent theme. Without fail, we always got started a little bit later than we hoped to, and everything seemed to always take a little longer than we thought. My helmet had been stolen the night before so I had to go out and buy a new one. Emil’s bike needed to be fixed up which took a while. It was nearly 11am when we finally hit the road.

It really hit me as we left the city cruising down the A1, that I was actually doing this. At that moment I lived no where, all of my things were strapped to a bike driving 70 km/hr, weaving around Mack Trucks on a highway in Vietnam. It was comforting though to be with friends. Emil’s bike was shit and kept breaking down, but other than that the day went smoothly. We took a longer route so that we could traverse along the southern coast which turned out to be a great idea. The coast was rural and undeveloped but sprinkled with state-of-the-art resorts. Many more were being built as well, I saw countless plots of land sectioned off, signs advertising the building plans and opening dates posted. A couple of casinos had also been built but were utterly vacant, ghost casinos abandoned just weeks before their launch – an eery sight.

The ride to Mui Ne was around 280 km and took 7 hours with all the breaks and stops to check directions. It was annoying that access to our gas tanks was found in the trunk that our bags were strapped on top of, so every time we wanted to refuel we had to unstrap and then re-strap our stuff.

Driving at night is very dangerous because there aren’t many street lights, it’s hard for other cars to see you, and Mack truckers do not mind keeping their high beams on, honking their horn relentlessly, for the sake of reminding the rest of the road that they are present and not to be fucked with. Despite our late start we arrived just as it got dark. Here’s a look at our route on Google Maps.

Mui Ne is a coastal town in the southeast corner of Vietnam. Other than the fishing village at the tip of the coast the main town was very touristy. Most of the tourists were Russian and much of the signage in the area was written in Russian. We were there for one day and two nights and stayed at Zenora beach resort which had a really nice pool and courtyard.

During the day we explored the fishing village on motorbikes, checked out the famous red sand dunes at sunset, then went out for dinner and drinks. Afterwards Evan was adamant that the three of us were going to drink cobra blood. I admit I was against it at first. I just didn’t see the point. We drove down the road until we saw this sign:

 

 

I’ll let the video tell the rest of the story.

A unique experience to say the least.