I arrived in Saigon by bus. The bus ride from Cambodia had been uncomfortable, but it was probably one of the better bus trips that I took in Asia. Most bus rides in Asia are terrible as six foot tall male.
At the bus station I disembarked and got my backpack from the storage compartment under the bus. It didn’t take long to realize that someone’s Styrofoam cooler full of dead fish had broken and my backpack had spent the past few hours sitting in a puddle of fish water. I couldn’t really do anything about the backpack so I put it on and took a moto-taxi to the tourist part of the city.
I didn’t have a room booked, and I didn’t have a sim card for my phone so I wandered around a little bit. Wandering around with all of my luggage is my least favorite part of traveling. Luckily a random lady asked me if I needed a room. She took me to a decent place that had an Indian restaurant on the ground floor. The room didn’t have any windows and smelled musty and full of mildew. It was cheap, cleanish, in a good location, and had air conditioning so I agreed to take it.
I freshened up and went out to find a sim card and some beer. Both were easy to find so I spent a few hours drinking beer and looking for a scooter online. Craigslist had a lot of bikes, but I didn’t want to buy a Honda Win. The Wins are the most common motorbike for tourists. 9 out of 10 people who do a scooter trip across Vietnam do it on a Honda Win. The thing is no one else in Vietnam rides them. I decided to ride what the locals ride. I figured parts and repairs would be cheaper and easier to find for the same kinds of bikes that the locals use.
I saw ads for Tigit won Craigslist and they had good reviews on Trip Advisor. I called them up and set up an appointment to come in.
They didn’t have many semiautomatics, so I ended up with a Chinese knock-off of a Honda Dream. Luckily they had helmets too. My head is too big for Vietnamese helmets, and most of them are worthless for safety. I think I paid $375 for the bike and helmet. Before leaving Vietnam (4 months later) I returned the bike and helmet and got around $200 back. Not bad considering that I was planning on abandoning the bike and helmet before I remembered the company’s buy-back policy.
The lady that I bought the bike from gave me a map with a route to Hanoi, and common repair shop phrases in Vietnamese. She told me, “If you get into an accident, even if it’s not your fault. Run. Get out of there as quick as you can. If a crowd gathers it will be bad for you.” Then she explained the road support that was included in the bike’s price. If my bike broke down, I was to take it to a mechanic then call her. She translates for me and explains that the bike is a rental in an attempt to get a “local” price instead of the usual inflated “tourist” price. I would end up using this service a number of times on my trip, and each time it was a relief to have a local on my side. She also explained what I should do if the police stop me, “The only police that will stop you are the ones that speak English. Try to speak in Spanish or German to them, act like you don’t speak English.” Luckily I never had to use that bit of advice.
I rode my new vehicle back to my hotel, and I was terrified. I had very little experience with scooters before coming to Asia. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia I got pretty comfortable going long distances on scooters, but I had no experience driving in cities. Driving back to my hotel in Saigon was probably most nervous that I’ve been on a bike. People coming from all directions on foot and in vehicles. People driving the wrong way, people ignoring traffic signals.
I made it back to my hotel in one piece. Since the hotel was an Indian restaurant on the ground floor, there wasn’t anywhere to securely park my bike. I talked with one of the waiters/desk clerks and they told me to leave it on the street and they’d bring it inside when the restaurant closed.
That night I met up with a friend that I’d made in Thailand. We did a fair amount of drinking and wondering at the madness surrounding us. The memory of that night is a little hazy, but I do recall seeing a fire-breathing 9 year old kid put on a show in the street.
The next day I packed up my bag and checked out of my hotel. It didn’t take very much time to realize that my backpack was huge and was occupying about 90% of my seat. Previously I hadn’t ridden with my main backpack, I only had my day bag to deal with. It would take many days before I managed to find a comfortable way to mount my backpack.
I got the bag secured to my seat and headed out of Saigon. I’m not real sure why I didn’t film on the first days of my trip. I think I just wanted to reduce as many distractions as possible until I got more comfortable on the bike. Riding out of the city wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. I found that if you just follow a group of other riders and do what they do, ignoring traffic signals, it works out pretty well. I do remember accidentally driving onto a cars-only freeway and having to turn around and go the wrong way on the scooter-free one-way freeway. After that I found a ferry and it seemed like a very different place on the other side of the river. It was still densely populated, but there was a distinct feeling of leaving the city.
Since it was my first day of riding, I planned to make it a short day. I wanted to make sure the bike was running properly and I wanted to give myself some time to get used to the unfamiliar bike. I headed west and south to the ocean.
The scenery wasn’t the greatest. The area was densely populated which meant that there was a lot of traffic and not much nature. I spotted a place that made statues and stopped for a picture. Later the land would become less populated, but it was generally covered in trash and without many trees.
Eventually I made it to the ocean and found a hotel for the night. The hotel guy insisted that he hold on to my passport until I checked out. By this time I had traveled 15 or 20 countries and I’d only been asked to leave my passport once, in Budapest, by a kid who looked 15. I refused in Budapest, but I didn’t see much point in making a big deal about it here. I didn’t speak the same language as the guy from the hotel, so any carefully crafted logic would be useless. It turns out that almost every hotel in Vietnam will hold on to your passport until you check out. I gave him my passport, dropped off my bag, and went out for a ride.
I rode along the coast, stopping to take photos every now and then. Vietnam seemed weird. For the most part, the people were nice, but there were so many of them! I was in Vung Tau, which I’d never heard of and which didn’t look like much on Google Maps, but it was a city that seemed more populated than biggest city I’d seen in Laos. There was trash everywhere, which bothered me in Laos and Cambodia, but I was beginning to ignore it. Everything just seemed so foreign. I still had almost 30 days on my visa and no real final destination in mind. I was feeling a mixture of “What the fuck am I doing here alone!?” and “Holy shit! I’m here, I can go or stay anywhere I want!” It was like a mix of excitement with a healthy pinch of terror.
After a few hours I found some food and beer. I brought some beer back to my room and spent the evening drinking and messing around on my phone.
You may notice that this post is titled "Day 1", but covers several days. I'm considering the "Day 1" to be the first day of riding .