Whoever you are: a person who rarely travels or a professional traveler, an expert or just a novice rider, we hope that the information we provide in this article and on our website will be useful and help you have the better preparation for a motorcycle tour in Vietnam.
Protection gears:
In fact, protection gears are very important to a motorcycle tour, especially with a dirt-bike tour. You should choose the best gears you can afford and the gears also have to make you feel safe, convenient, comfortable and suitable for the trip. Depend on your kind of bike, kind of ride and the terrain of ride, you will have the best choice of appropriate protection gears. Here are some essential gears you need to prepare before the trip: helmet, goggle, armor, boots, gloves, elbows and knees pads, jackets, and pants.
Please remember that no skills, no vehicles or protection gears can protect you 100%. Only good preparation before the trip and riding carefully can help you safe. If you do not prepare well, please stay at home.
If you ride with us, but not ready to bring your own gears, please contact us to be prepared in the best way.
Personal items:
Actually, we do not intend to mention the personal items that you use every day. What we want to mention are your necessary things for a trip in general and for a Vietnam motorbike tour in particular. These items are equipped to suit the way of travelling, climate, and weather. So, what are they?
– Water Proof Bag, rain gears: Prepare these items to protect yourself and your luggage from the rain. In Vietnam, rain can happens any time in a year.
– Clothes: You should bring clothes which are suitable to each climate in each region. In the south of Vietnam, it has only 2 seasons: wet season and dry season. The temperature is 20-30ºC in the wet season, and 28-40 in the dry one; therefore, you do not have to bring warm clothes when travelling in this region. However, you can enjoy the 4 seasons in the North Vietnam: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In spring, it is cool and has little rain. In summer, it is hot and often has heavy rain. In autumn, it has both drizzling and heavy rains. In winter, it is quite cold and has less rain. Besides, each region has 2 separate parts: mountain part and delta part which have the big gap of and that leads to the fact that the temperature and climate in any region in Vietnam can change quickly.
– Medicines and other medical tools: If you were ill from home, please bring your own medicines which your doctors prescribed because in the remote area in Vietnam, it is not easy to buy your kind of medicine. Vietnam is a tropical climate country, so it has a lot of insects, please bring anti mosquito bite cream, or insect repellent if you ride into the rain forest areas.
Also, bring the basic personal healthcare to handle situations commonly encountered. In the program of our tour, tour guides always carry basic First Aid Kit in each trip.
– Camera, rechargeable battery backup are also indispensable for any trip
Basic tools and spare parts
Our guide or mechanic will carry the tools needed to fix the basic bike problems during the trip. Besides, they also bring the associated spare parts for each type of bikes and each broken part. If you want to comfort when riding, join our Vietnam motorcycle tours and let us solve your bike problems. In case you want to explore the rout by your own, please prepare carefully both skills and necessary tools to handle all risks. For example, tire replacement, or bike electrical system checking are the first lessons to learn for a long trip.
Knowledge:
– Traffic culture in Vietnam: Although we call “traffic culture”, it is sad to say that in some areas in Vietnam, Vietnamese people join traffic with no rules. They can participate in traffic right after drinking beer and wine, use horn loudly to surpass, pass on the right, turn left or right with no turn signal, or ride into the other vehicle lanes, … Therefore, to be safe when riding motorbikes in Vietnam, in addition to learning the basic regulations of the law on road traffic, you have to know the traffic habits of Vietnamese people. Here are some basic rules to participate in traffic in Vietnam:
+ Keep to the right in their travel direction.
+ Allowed speed for motorcycles: 40km/h in towns and 60 km/h outside of towns.
+ Use the horn, headlights when your view is limited at the corner.
+ Use turn signals and also turn your head to look back when you want to change the lane or direction.
+ Be careful when you want to surpass because many people cross the street, change the lane or direction without any signal.
+ When you ride in the track, or cross the forest, do not think that the way is just for you. Please remember, many local people and their animals have a habit of crossing the road freely because they also think like you: nobody here at all.
For more knowledge about safe riding, please follow this link: How to Ride Safely in Vietnam
– Customs and habits of local people: Vietnam has 54 ethnic groups settling in over 63 provinces and cities. These ethnic groups use different languages when communicating in their communities, but the main language they use is the Kinh language. Because each group live in a different region; therefore, they have different traditional customs and habits, in which, there are many nice customs but also many taboo ones for outsiders. For example, when you stay at the house of the H’mong people, please make sure that you do not step on the stove, do not let the water pour off the fire, do not burn the rice cake while baking. Or when you ride to the village of Ha Nhi people and see a greeting gate temporarily built with a knife, wooden sword and chicken head and wings tied on the top of the gate, please do not try to ride through this gate because the people living in this village are organizing rituals to dispel evil spirits.
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