The Northern Ho Chi Minh Road: Khe Sanh to Tam Coc

After a cold night in a room with a broken heater, the following morning brought sunny weather, perfect for the long day of mountain riding ahead. I visited the museum at the former Marine combat base at Khe Sanh, with a well-preserved C-130 transport aircraft, bunkers, and trenches on display, along with the usual descriptions of acts of bravery perpetrated by the Communist forces who made life hell for the American defenders.

The base is a great metaphor for American military thinking during the Vietnam War. Two Marine regiments and a small Southern force held the base for six months in 1968 while being attacked by nearly three North Vietnamese divisions who besieged the base and cut it off from outside supplies. The US responded by dropping over 100,000 tons of bombs on the area in an effort to break the attackers' spirits. A relief force finally managed to reach the base after months of fighting, after which the base was abandoned for fear of a repeat battle which would end in defeat. Three years later, the US reoccupied the base to provide support for Southern units operating in Laos, and then abandoned it again after they were defeated, not before taking heavy casualties. Situated on a tranquil grassy plateau overlooking mountain valleys, it was another one of those beautiful places you can hardly imagine were once the sites of so much violence. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the mortars and bombs falling, but only heard birds and the breeze. The scene made me think of Chava Alberstein's song Hachita Tzomachat Shuv ("The Wheat Grows Once More"), which I sang to myself in memory of those who lost their lives here.

Following the Slovak Speed Demon

After stocking up on extra fuel, I rode north on the HCM Road, which I had departed at Khâm Đức nearly a week earlier. A gushy sign in the village of Hướng Phùng invited travelers into a roadside café, so I stopped to check it out.

I was immediately greeted warmly by the owner, who sat down to talk to me with his adorable 10-year-old son. They were extremely kind and genuine people, happy to receive guests from other countries and to practice their English with them. A few minutes later, another visitor walked in and received the same treatment. The newcomer was Mihal, a Slovak who was riding the same route as I was, so we decided to ride together. We took pictures with our hosts, I signed their visitors book, and we were on our way.

The riding was nothing short of incredible, the best I had done thus far in Vietnam. For 200 kilometers, we twisted our way through beautiful mountain passes on roads with minimal traffic, the scenery getting better the further north we rode and especially after entering the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. Mihal turned out to be a speed demon, flying through the turns faster than I dared, which pushed me to the limit of my riding skills trying to follow him but was a massive adrenaline rush. I could hardly wipe the smile off my face, cheering to myself after each well-executed corner. My 150 cc manual bike was faster than his 110 automatic, which was perfect since I could make up the distance he'd gained on me in the turns on the uphill streches.

The road had been very smooth riding out of Khe Sanh, but the further north we reached the more gravel spilled over from the shoulders onto the road, the possibilities of slipping growing with every turn. Mihal's aggressive riding got the better of him, and an unfortunate patch of gravel caused him to fall in a particularly sharp uphill turn. Piča! He was fine, his brand-new jacket absorbing most of the fall, but I rode point for the rest of the day.

This was also the most remote part of Vietnam I had seen thus far, with a full 130 kilometers between gas stations selling 95 octane, equivalent to about 80% of my tank. For most of the way we were entirely alone, occasionally passing small nameless villages or other riders. It turned out Mihal had similar plans to me, so we decided to stick together until he had to go to Hanoi to fly home. It was nice to have someone to ride with, even though you can't really interact on the road. Taking turns leading takes some of the stress off and lets you settle into a more automatic riding rhythm, besides the obvious advantage of having someone to split meals with.

Phong Nha: Ducks, Caves and Ziplines

We made it to Phong Nha, the self-titled adventure capital of the north, in late afternoon. The contrast with Khe Sanh was dramatic: restaurants and hostels replaced the truck mechanics and gas stations of the morning, with groups of tourists milling about in the streets. Our hostel had a free barbeque dinner, where to my surprise we encountered Dana and Noa. In hindsight, it was hardly an unlikely coincidence, considering the place was about 25% Israeli, to the extent that the café next door served hummus and shakshuka.

The twins had similar plans to ours for the next day so we invited them to catch a ride with us on the backs of our bikes.

Phong Nha is best-known for its impressive underground cave formations and we planned to visit the two most famous ones in one day. Our plans were foiled, however, when Mihal got a flat tire a few kilometers out of town. I carried both twins behind me as he limped back to town and we had coffee while the wheel was being repaired. We figured we only had time to visit one cave at this point so we rode to Dark Cave, which had been highly recommended to us. The place was how I had imagined tourist attractions in Southeast Asia before arriving - you take a zipline into the cave, tour the inside of it, kayak back out, and then hang out in an area with more ziplines and swings into the river.

The cave itself was pretty awesome, even though it felt like a minor part of the whole package, impressive in its enormity and full of beautiful stalactite formations. We walked up a narrow channel into a cavern full of soft mud, deeper then my knees in some points, and lathered up, almost as if we were in the Dead Sea. The small water park in the end was a blast as well, the thrill of doing a backflip off a zipline into a river only wearing off when the physical effects of multiple hard impacts with the water started to be felt.

We still had a couple hours left before sunset, so we decided to visit the Duck Station, a place that had been recommended by some Israelis at the cave. You put on some plastic sandals and a nón lá, the traditional conical Vietnamese hat, and enter an enclosure with hundreds of ducks. The guide then throws food at the ground around you, causing the ducks to swarm you, furiously pecking at your feet and the surrounding ground.

After getting a chance to feed the ducks ourselves, we were sat down in a row with our feet cupped and the guide filled the space between our feet ("like Buddha") with food. The ducks attack en masse in what they call a "duck foot massage", which actually bears remarkable resemblance to a normal foot massager. Altogether, hats off to whatever local had the brilliant idea to bring tourists to his duck farm for some unexpected fun.

In my experience, good hostels are the ones where you have unconventional yet enjoyable experiences with former strangers and this one definitely made the cut. After watching the sunset with a spectacular view of the town and river, happy hour brought very intense games of Uno with some Swiss girls and the Canadian volunteering at the hostel followed by a midnight noodles dash with Dana, where a group of Israelis was blasting Red Band and the owner was trying to slowly lower the volume without them noticing. Another fantastic day in Vietnam.

Deteriorating Conditions

The following day left no doubt we were firmly in the north of the country, famous for its fickle weather. It started off great, riding on what seemed to be an old airstrip out of town and through the national park on wide and empty mountain roads.

The sun refused to make an appearance and it was chillier than it had been previously. It started to rain, not much more than a drizzle but enough to make the roads muddy. The real problem started past the town of Phúc Trạch when the road started filling up with trucks, which sprayed us with mud until we could find a place to pass them. We only rode for four hours that day, and only about half of that on wet roads, but every part of me that had been exposed to the wind was wet and dirty.

We were staying in a little eco-lodge quite literally in the middle of nowhere, a mile off the highway at the end of a dirt road. The rain had turned everything to slick mud, which demanded extremely cautious and slow riding. Spotting a pothole ahead of me, I instinctively hit the back brake, causing the bike to fishtail and completely throwing me off balance. Before I could right myself, I found myself on the ground with the motorcycle lying on my leg. More to the point, the other leg was resting on the exhaust pipe. Having just ridden for four straight hours, it was scorching hot and left quite a mark on my leg, but otherwise I was fine. We made it to the lodge and spent the remaining daylight underneath blankets as it rained non-stop.

We were joined by Koen, a Dutchman riding the opposite way who gave us some good route tips, and our host cooked us a delicious Vietnamese dinner. The fog finally lifted in the morning, albeit only partially, letting us finally appreciate the amazing views of a lake surrounded by tea plantations from the lodge we had previously only seen online. The rural Vietnamese experience was completed by a delicious breakfast of egg noodle soup, a far cry from the ordinary pancakes and eggs in hostels.

Trying to get the worst of the mud off my bike with a broom and some water, I noticed my gearshift was quite bent out of shape from my fall, making upshifts somewhat challenging. We set off on the Ho Chi Minh Road for the last time, stopping at a mechanic in the next village to get my gearshift sorted out. A big wrench made the lever straight again, but the gears weren't clicking into place as well as they should have been. He refused to take any money, but his friends wanted selfies with the tall foreigner, a request I was happy to oblige.

Truck Mania

After gradually descending out of the mountains, we stopped to rest at a dam in the Ben En National Park. The conditions were even worse that day - it wasn't raining, but the roads were really wet and muddy and we were getting sprayed relentlessly.

Pretty soon after the dam, we found ourselves on the main QL1A road, which at that point was a two-lane highway full of trucks. It was a fast way to cover ground, averaging a previously-unimaginable 75 km/h, but it was miserable riding. Vietnamese truck drivers have zero respect for any vehicle smaller than theirs and treat motorcycles as if they don't exist, switching lanes without bothering to signal or check if the next lane is free. The flat gray skies mixed with the smog of the Vietnamese lowlands did nothing to make me feel better.

The mud spraying was even worse than the previous day, so by the time we arrived both I and the bike looked like we had been half-heartedly spray-painted brown, my arms and legs soaked from the elbows and knees down from the traffic. It wasn't just an aesthetic issue; I kept on having to wipe my visor to clear the mud spray that relentlessly accumulated on it until my gloves turned brown themselves.

We finally arrived in Tam Coc and had a much-needed shower. After we had recuperated and hung our things up to dry, Mihal suggested we get dinner at a street food market in the neighboring city of Ninh Bình. My windbreaker and gloves were still soaked and I figured they would only make me colder, so I rode in only a fleece and jeans in the 15° night, shaking in the wind once we got on the highway. The last two days had made me appreciate how much colder it is to be on a motorcycle, the wind contributing 10-15° to my sense of cold on overcast days.

The market turned out to be a market in the literal sense, only selling raw ingredients, and the other options around didn't look amazing, so we had tacos at the biggest hostel in Tam Coc, with the most expensive beer I had had yet in Vietnam - 60,000 dong ($2.5) for a mediocre Hanoi microbrew.

The Least Serious Dentist

It seemed the bad weather and the viral outbreak had scared off all the tourists, since the town was practically deserted, forcing us to have another early night. The door to our dorm room burst open as we were getting in bed. In walked a guy out of breath who said his bus had left him stranded by the roadside and he had practically run here, seeing it was the closest hostel. We hit it off right away and invited him to join us the following day.

One of the hostel employees came up to us at breakfast and said/gestured there was a problem with our bikes. Fearing the worst, we dashed to the motorcycle parking and discovered a puddle of fuel beneath Mihal's bike. We took it to a local mechanic but it would take most of the day to fix so he rode behind me for the rest of the day.

The main activity in this area was boat rides, but they hadn't sounded so great to us and we had decided to give it a pass. Instead, we wanted to visit a pagoda that had been recommended to us and stopped at an ATM along the way. As it turned out, the ATM was across the street from the boat terminal, so we figured we might as well try it out. We waited for our roommate, whose name was Max and was a German dentist (the most laid-back one I've met), to join us and got on a small boat rowed by an even smaller Vietnamese woman.

The ride ended up being amazing. The day had started off really foggy, but it had thinned out enough by the time we set sail to get good views. The landscape was like nothing I had ever seen before, jagged limestone hills rising sharply out of canals linked to each other by narrow caves. The locals seemed to think it was pretty great, too; we spotted 3 couples having wedding photoshoots on the water.

We climbed up some of the hills to beautiful pagodas where you could easily picture Buddhist monks meditating like something out of a cheesy movie about ancient China. Every time we sailed through a mysterious cave, we would come out to a different landscape from the one we had just left, the light fog contributing to the mystery factor.

We rode back towards the village and walked through a decidedly touristy park. Our destination was Hang Múa, a viewpoint 461 steps (I counted!) above us. Winded, we were treated to fantastic views of the surrounding area at the top. To the west was the beautiful national park we had spent the last few hours exploring by boat, limestone peaks interspersed with flat wetland, and to the east was smoggy urban sprawl, providing quite a contrast.

The peak wouldn't have passed any sort of safety inspection in a Western country, with tourists clambering on jagged limestone formations while trying not to fall into the deep abyss below them, but it was totally normal in Vietnam, where safety railings are unheard of, both on roads and at tourist attractions. I suspect the official party line is probably something along the lines of: 'the founders didn't need them to fight the imperialists so we don't, either!'

The third site that had been recommended to us was the Bái Đính Temple, half an hour's ride away. We got there and discovered it was absolutely massive, a foot tour requiring around 3 hours. With less than an hour of sunlight left, we gave it a pass, much to the disappointment of a local guide who was trying to convince us to go on a quick tour with her. On the upside, the ride back to the hostel had fantastic views of the sunset over the limestone formations, which we stopped to photograph multiple times.

We had a hotpot dinner, our highly matronly waitress expertly moving things in and out of the pot and making sure we had equal portions of everything while attempting to lecture us on proper eating procedure in broken English.

Mihal and I tried local rice wine, which is basically vodka but even worse and with a slightly lower alcohol content (lose-lose?) and we picked up his bike from the shop. He needed a receipt to get a refund for the service, but the mechanic didn't have any, so applying classic Vietnamese problem-solving skills he took a receipt from the karaoke place next door, crossed out the name and wrote his instead.

Our hostel had a pool, which was useless for swimming in this weather, but a great place to sit with a beer and head stories of life in Košice, Slovakia. With our bikes fixed and our clothes dry, all we could do was hope for good weather.