Thunder Roads Magazine of Oklahoma/Arkansas June 2014 | Page 47

FEATURES

bike show. When I got there and
met Kevin, he asked me if I had
any money. I told him I had 40 or
50 bucks if he wanted to borrow
it. He said no, no man, do you
have enough money to go to Viet
Nam? I said well yah and he said
let’s go. He was getting ready to
leave in two days. I wasn’t ready
for that and said I’d have to think
about that.
So I spent some time with a
buddy in San Diego then started
heading east. I got to Phoenix
when I received a call from my
buddy in San Diego, who I told
about Bean’res trip. He told me if
I wanted to go, I could leave my
bike at his house and he would
take me to the airport and pick
me up when I come back. I rode
back to San Diego the next day
and that gave me 2 days to get
ready for my trip to Viet Nam. I had
to get a visa squared away, get
an airline ticket on short notice,
get my credit cards to work
overseas, and securing enough
cash that would be needed. By
the way I took $3000 with me
and came back with $800 of it.
That was how I decided to go to
Viet Nam. It was not a country I
would have decided to go to on
my own, everyone has a vision

of Viet Nam that turns out to be
totally false. Viet Nam has the
friendliest people I have met
in my life, anywhere. It is just a
beautiful country and they don’t
hate Americans over there.
A couple of days after
Christmas, Kevin Bean’re met
me at the Saigon (Ho Chi Min
City) airport. My plane was about
two hours late and I was a little
worried that I’d miss him, but he
was there and we took a cab ride
to the area known as the tourist
district. That area had a lot of
cheap hotels that were generally
$10 to 12.50 a night and you
park your motorcycles in the hotel
lobby. My first impression was all
the traffic and 90% of all vehicles

were motorcycles. If you haven’t
seen any videos of the traffic
in the city, it is unbelievable. It
is total chaos, but controlled
chaos. If you decide to cross the
street, you just start walking and
do not deviate your speed at all.
If you hesitate, you are going to
get hit. You take a steady speed
walking, stick to it and people
will go around you. The same is
true of crossing on a motorcycle.
Never, ever deviate your speed.
The motorcycles in Viet
Nam can only be 175 cc or less.
You even need to have a special
permit to have a 175, so you don’t
see many 175cc motorcycles.
Everything is generally 50cc or
100cc size. Sometime people
will put big bore kits on them to
get by. I did see one Sportster
there and two Ducati’s the whole
time I was in Viet Nam. If you
have a lot of money, you can
have a bigger bike and pay the
cops off as needed. Kevin and I
bought motorcycles from a guy
that buys used bikes, fixes them
up and sells them to tourists like
us. Mine was a 2006 Honda Win
which was 100cc. I looked the
bike over and told them it needs
Thunder Roads Magazine of OK/AR

47