Well, my memory didn’t fail me, and I got it right all the way to the edge of the city map. But just beyond the edge was a T-junction that Tin hadn’t warned me about. And so I had to choose a direction. I chose right. The direction right, that is. It seemed to be the correct choice. It seemed to take me in a southeasterly direction. But there was no way to be certain. The sun was obscured by the low overcast and smog that had blanketed Hanoi for almost the entire time I had been there. And I had no compass or GPS. So I just followed what appeared to be the main road, hoping for the best.
I also had no familiar landmarks to fall back on. I was flying blind. But there! I had seen that arch with the horses before! I must be following the course we used on the tour to leave Hanoi. What luck!
No, wait. I remember when I had seen that arch before. It was the day I arrived from the airport. And the airport is north of town, not southwest! I’m way off course!
So I turned around and retraced my route. I went back a few kilometers and took the first right turn that seemed like a major road. And soon I was recognizing landmarks. So I finally had some idea where I was headed, due east.
This wasn’t the southeast course I was after, but I knew that after about 30 km I’d hit the north-south road to Xuan Mai. I would just hit it about 13 km farther north than I had intended. No biggie.
So by about ten I reached Xuan Mai. But there were no road signs indicating which way to turn to get onto Highway 21, the next road I was to take. So I made a blind guess and turned.
For another hour or so I had no idea what road I was on and which direction I was going. It seemed to be a major road, which I thought was a good sign. And I seemed to be traveling south, which is the direction I wanted to go. But really, I had no way of knowing if I was headed east, west, north or south. The towns I passed through had no signs indicating what they were called, and there were no kilometer markers showing the number of the highway I was on. I was flying blind again. And I was getting a little worried.
The worry got suddenly intense when the highway vanished into a muddy construction site. I stopped and dismounted; hoping the construction workers there might be able to help. But when I showed them my map they just gaped at it as if I was asking them to decipher Martian hieroglyphics.
So I backtracked to the last intersection and made another random selection. This was a smaller road, but it did have kilometer markers that showed it to be a route parallel to the one I wanted. At last I had some idea where I was on the map. And at last, two hours after setting off, I knew which direction I was going.
But the adventure was far from over. Once on Highway 21 I was making good time until the road surface turned to packed dirt. Then it turned to rocky gravel. And then to a muddy goat trail meandering through a massive construction site.
Tin had warned me that some part of Highway 21 was “under construction.” But I thought that meant that they were making repairs to an existing road. No, it turns out that they were building the road. So for about 20 km I struggled through a muddy, rutted trail that most cars couldn’t negotiate. And it was far from easy on a Minsk. I was reduced to first gear almost the entire time.
But a real road finally re-emerged on the far side, and I made it to Cam Thuy, where I gassed up for the next stretch. This day was not going according to plan, and I was about two hours behind my intended schedule.
Plus, it was damn cold, and I was shivering under every stitch of clothing I could pile on. Oh, how I missed my own motorcycle’s heated grips and electric vest!
I took another wrong turn and meandered around some muddy villages later in the afternoon, but by four o’clock I finally made it to Highway 1, the main north-south highway in Vietnam. My intention is to avoid it as much as possible because it suffers from hellish traffic and insane drivers. And this was reinforced by my experience during those last 50 km into Vinh, my destination for the night. I was lucky to come out unscathed.
To put the icing on the cake, I almost ran out of gas. About 20 km north of Vinh my bike’s engine sputtered to a stop and I switched the tank’s petcock to reserve. Two things bothered me about that. Tin had told me that the reserve only lasts for about 7 km, a tiny margin of safety. And I had seriously misjudged the tank’s capacity.
Without an odometer I can only judge the distance I’ve traveled by keeping track of passing landmarks and knowing the distance between them. I had been told that the Minsk has a “safe” range of about 180 km, and can manage 200–220. But my best estimate was that I had only gone about 160 km on that tank before hitting reserve. Of course it was only an estimate because of all of the wrong turns and backtracking. But still, it made me uneasy.
Fortunately Highway 1 has lots of gas stations, so I pulled into one before the 7 km ran out. But it’s clear that I’ll have to do a better job of fuel management on the back roads that I intend to use.
By 5:30 in the evening, 9.5 hrs. after leaving Hanoi, I rolled into Vinh, a dreary industrial town on the southern edge of the Red River delta, and found a hotel. My room had peeling paint, a live cockroach in the bathtub, and the continuous din of Highway 1 traffic coming through the walls.
But I had made it here. And after repeatedly losing my way and struggling across some major obstacles, that felt pretty good.
Vinh at Dawn