Vietnam day trip day one

I woke up about 8am feeling a little bit anxious about the ride about to happen. Lee had already picked up his bike from the parking lot and told me that he just couldn't sleep. Had the breakfast and said goodbye to the hostel staff. I tied my backpack to the luggage rack and put the helmet on. I was as ready as I could be to do the HCMR and experience the real Vietnam.

Me and Lee drove to the hostel where the rest of the pack was staying and started waiting for them to get ready. After an hour our convoy was finally ready to leave Hanoi.  Lee was gonna be the leader of the pack and navigate us out of the city. 

Ladies and gentlemen! Star you engines! On the road we were.

Our convoy almost ready to leave. Emilie
behind me. 

But the joy was premature, oh boy it was. Then again what can you expect if you pay around 200€ a bike. Emilie's scooter was the first one to break down. That happened having been on the road about 2 kilometres. Muahahhahaa. I stopped to help her and so stopped Max and Rasmus. This is how we lost Lee. Lee just went M.I.A. Max even went to look for him but couldn't find him. We though that he just didn't see us stop and decided to continue when he realised that there's nobody following him. We also didn't know where Stinne and Soren were. To summarise; after 10 minutes of driving the group was already split in three. Lee was M.I.A. so was Stinne and Soren.

Emilie's scooter had some problems with the idle run. Every time she stopped the engine stalled. She needed to give it some gas and hold it still with the brake. We decided that it is better to get it fixed before leaving Hanoi. We pushed her bike to the nearest garage and called the guy who sold us the bikes for help since of course on English at all in the garage. The seller promised to come and help. While waiting for the bike seller the guys at the garage had a look at the bike anyways and gave us the thump down for the repair. Luckily one local guy with quite good English passed us and translated the situation to us. Emilie's bike would need a new part, an expensive part. Shit. 

Well we waited some more and saw Stinne's bike being pushed by the locals. Stinne was steering and this local guy just had his leg straightened against Stinne's exhaust pipe while driving. Mental way to push someones bike. We saw that Soren was with her. They didn't see us but at least we now new why we had lost them. Breakdown number 2.

Garage no1

After 1,5 hours we got a word from Soren that he and Stinne is at the shop and the seller is not happy at all and that he's probably not coming to help us any time soon. Ok, let's drive to the shop then. We some how managed to get Emilie's bike to the shop and so there we were, back at the shop. 6 of us reunited but Lee still missing. It was already afternoon and I really wanted to get the hell out of Hanoi and so wanted Max and Rasmus. We made an agreement that that us three should start driving. Emilie, Stinne and Soren would catch us up as soon as they would get their problems solved. Not bad for first day so far... No way to contact Lee though since he didn't have Vietnamese sim-card. 

Me, Max and Rasmus FINALLY got on the road properly and managed to leave Hanoi and everything was going smoothly. Not.

"It's cool, it's cool!" This is me at the first gasoline station
of the trip.

And this is the first picture taken outside Hanoi.

10 kilometres after Hanoi I saw Rasmus getting behind. "Not again, wtf now". Yep, Rasmus's scooter definitely had a problem. It took RPM's but no power was transmitted to the rear tyre. So it was time to find a garage. Vietnamese woman working in a gasoline station showed us the way to a garage after some hand signs. Helpful people these Vietnamese. The rest of the hand signs were done at the garage to explain the problem and to ask how much it would cost. 750k Dongs (30€) including the parts and the work.

This is the first garage to fix Rasmus's bike. Rasmus
on left and Max smiling on right.

 Rasmus wasn't so happy with the situation but what could we do. One of the guys drove somewhere to get the new drive belt and maybe like an hour later we were ready to get back on the road just to drive 10  minutes for the drive belt to snap again. Holy shit. The gods were really against our road trip. Rasmus was totally pissed off and was pushing his bike forward in a hope to find the next garage. Well if there's somebody living somewhere in Vietnam there is also a mechanic. This time it was 500k Dongs for the repairs. Rasmus was even showing the guy how to put the parts back together. Just unbelievable amount of bad luck on our first day.
Lee was missing, The Danes were still somewhere in Hanoi trying to get the 2 scooters fixed and Rasmus' bike had broke down two times already and we were only 10 kilometres from Hanoi. Muahhahhaaa. The situation was just ridiculous. The two breakdowns were really bothering Rasmus and he decided to head back to Hanoi really slowly and get the bike fixed there properly before we got to the mountains. So at that point there was only me and Max who managed to leave Hanoi since Lee was still M.I.A.

This is the hotel we stayed the first night with max.
Fancy! 4€/night/person =)

Me and Max managed to find a place to sleep on a dot on a map and just wanted some food. We picked a restaurant  with some locals and that's when the fun started. It was the first time of many to come when local people just wanted to get us drunk. It was basically impossible to say not to all that vodka and beer and I don't mean the alcohol itself but the plying. "We in Vietnam really friendly!" "You drink now!" It was nice to end the adventurous day with great food and weird locals asking if the girls in Vietnam are beautiful. Word!