Emotional Departure From Vietnam

Motorbiking Vietnam for the last 2 months has been beautiful, scary, painful and so worth it.

As we leave Mui Ne in the direction of our last stop, we both individually reflect on what the journey has meant to us. We give our motorbikes a good clean at our accommodation so they’re ready for the last ride and to be sold when we arrive in Ho Chi Minh City.

The road leading to Ho Chi Minh was mundane, grey and BUSY. It felt like the whole of Vietnam were filtering their way towards the city on the same day as us.

Every kilometre close we got, it got 5% busier. It was so important to stay switched on so we didn’t fall (quite literally) at the last hurdle.

The sky ahead was grey, like REALLY dark. A storm was brewing and we had 50km to go. As the rain started to splash on our helmets, we knew we were in trouble. We had never experienced rain quite like it. It was aggressive rain, the roads became flooded in ankle deep water within 30 minutes. We had to make a very quick decision to carry on or pull over and we chose to carry on, we were nearly there (we know 50km isn’t close but when we were looking at it from a “let’s finish this 2200km journey” it felt pretty close)

Most motorbike drivers had pulled over taking shelter under bridges , lorries were whizzing past us and splashing us heavily as they did so. It was intense. Our camera equipment stopped working and our phones were barely hanging on… but eventually we made it to the comfort of Meander Hotel Saigon.

With the entire contents of our backpacks completely soaked, it wasn’t the end we had in our mind but it was our end and we loved every minute of it.

This was the last episode of our motorcycle diaries through Vietnam. We hope we have managed to entertain, educate or even inspire you.

Thank you for watching, our trip in Vietnam has come to an end but we continue our journey on and we hope you are along for the ride too.

Erin & Jason