The countdown begins!

First let me welcome you to this little blog, and thank you for taking the time to check it out.  I'll endeavour to post a few updates beforehand, but mainly during the trip itself.

Background...

In a nutshell, this blog is all about the second motorcycle trip/adventure/expedition to Vietnam undertaken by my mates and I.  That trip was known for various reasons as NamBusters.  Why "NamBusters"?  Not saying.  But this one is obviously Nambusters II.

L-R: Me, Phil TK, Del-boy

L-R: Del-boy, Pinky, Phil TK, Me

I've been riding motorbikes for around 18 years, mainly sports bikes, supermoto and dirt bikes. I've had a few Honda VTR1000's (Firestorm / Superhawk), a Z750, a Buell X1, an XR650SM and a Husaberg 501SM amongst others. For about a decade now, me along with several of my friends have been doing an annual motorbike trip somewhere. We've been to the Isle of Man for the TT, we've been around Europe, to Holland, Belgium, and to Germany several times (mainly to the fantastic Harz area, guided by and staying with our good friends Greg and Jacqui Niven at the Pension Roseneck in Harz).  One of our number - Phil - is a qualified diving instructor and for several years has spent months at a time out in Thailand doing dive instruction.  He had recently ridden the Ho Chi Minh trail from Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city up to Hanoi, and on the last Germany trip he floated the idea of doing something similar.

Well in an unusual turn of events, and unlike so many pub-plans laid with the best of intentions, this one actually happened.  A few of the crew had to drop out for personal or work reasons, and at one point it was just me and Phil.  We managed to convince Del-boy to join us despite him having not rode a motorbike for around 6 years.  We decided to visit the more rural north of Vietnam, and hooked up with a tour company who provided us with motorbikes and a legend of a guide: Pinky. The company in question is Flamingo Travel who are based in Hanoi.

You can read all about our first trip, which took place between March-April 2014, in the trip report that was posted HERE

We did two parts to that trip. The first and larger part was a loop around the North West, touching on the border with China before looping back to Hanoi.  We then did a 3-day part two which was to the East and involved riding to Hai Phong, putting the bikes on a deathtrap rickety old floating plank ferry to Cat Ba island then going via another barely floating wreck of a fishing boat to Ha Long Bay to see what those lads on Top Gear were wittering on about.  Turns out they were right, it was incredible and if I could be back there right now I would do it in a heartbeat.

To add a bit of extra excitement to proceedings, we did the trip on 40 year old Minsks, an old Russian workhorse. They proved extremely reliable throughout the trip. Apart from Phil's which had to be bump started all week and then blew up on the last day. 

My trusty Minsk, which didn't blow up.

Nambusters 1 Route

We had such an amazing time we decided to go back, and after having seen the photos and trip report it was easier to convince a few others to join us.  So this time there will also be Jim, Bryan and Del-boy's son Joe-Joe.

Where do you start in planning something like this?  Well it's pretty easy.  The only things you really need to sort out are...

1. Flights
2. Passport
3. Visa (Vietnam Embassy via post, takes a week or so)
4. Jabs & Malaria tablets (see your doctor 2 months in advance)
5. Travel Insurance (in the UK we found that the Post Office insurance was well suited for a motorbike trip like this)
6. A bit of cash (you can draw cash at almost any hotel as you need it, and Vietnam is CHEAP)
7. Oh, and a hotel.

Anything else is just a nice-to-have.

Unlike a lot of the western world where you often can't walk into a hotel and book a room (must be by phone or t'internet) in Vietnam you can.  On the first trip we booked the first couple of nights in a hotel and that was it.  We were going to be on tour, on the bikes and with accommodation sorted out for most of the rest of it but there was a couple of days that we would have been homeless.  We went up to a hotel at the end of the street and booked the remaining dates that we needed.

Obviously in our case we had the added complication of taking suitable motorbike gear.  Helmets, gloves, body armour, waterproofs, boots etc which is all a bit of a squeeze in the Samsonite but we managed it.  This year we have a much better idea of what we need and what we don't.

Nambusters II

What are our plans for this trip then...Well, again we will be starting in Hanoi but riding north east up to Ba Be National Park.  From there we continue to the North East to see this incredible waterfall at Ban Gioc which sits right on the border with China.

It will take until day 3 to get there.  Then we will double back on ourselves to Cao Bang, then head north to Dong Van.  From there, south-west to Ha Giang, on to Lao Cai then finally returning to Hanoi.

At this point most of the work is done, deposits paid, passport posted off for the visa, doctors appointment done and most of our kit is already sorted out. Now we get to enjoy the countdown and look forward to returning to Nam!