In Search of Adventure | Vietnam

From the edge of Hanoi and also the edge of one of the largest citrus farms that I've ever seen. I thought it would be a great idea to get away from the hustle and bustle and the madness of Hanoi and just head out aimlessly directly away from Vietnam's capital. So I've packed up my unreliable little scooter which still has chronic starting issues but I've semi-figured that out. You have to sometimes run with it to start it and then it gets going. I have packed, because there's no USB charger and I'll need that for sat-nav, I've packed my laptop which is in essence a portable battery to charge my phone. I've got a little wash bag and a couple of other bits and pieces because I think I may stay the night somewhere. But I'm going to do it old-school, I think. My mind often changes. I'm not going to use booking.com or anything. I'm just going to see where I end up and see if there's a little guest house in a village. You ready for this? You'll all be delighted. I bought a helmet. Do you know the main reason? Yes, safety, but also it's quite annoying with the air constantly blowing in your ears, especially when you do 40 miles an hour plus. So, being the huge Honda fan that I am, I bought this Honda helmet. Visor that goes all the way down, so I don't get any bugs in my face. And the price of this, the price of this helmet, £8.40. And no, before you ask, it's not DOT approved, it's not ECE approved or something like that. It's just a helmet. So, let's head off. I have no idea where I'm going. I'm just going out of town. So, let's run away together somewhere. I just don't know where yet. This video is sponsored by Surfshark. Surfshark's a VPN, a virtual private network, and it keeps all of your data safe. It does this by encrypting everything sent between your device and the internet. There's one other very clever thing that Surfshark can do. It can change your virtual location by switching your IP address to almost any other country in the world, regardless of where you are. And I'll give you three perfect examples about how useful Surfshark VPN's been on our first 10 days here in Vietnam. Number one, there is a program on ITVX, that's a British website showing programs that Monica and I are addicted to. The problem is you can only watch ITV programs if you're based in the UK. So, all I have to do on my laptop, open up the Surfshark app that I've installed, change my current location of Vietnam to my new virtual location of the UK, and there we go, seamless. We can carry on watching the shows we're addicted to. Number two, you can get cheap hotels. So, all I do, I go onto booking.com. On my phone, I change on the app my current location from Vietnam to any other country that I fancy. You can just scroll through different countries and you can find huge fluctuations in prices depending on where your virtual location is on the Surfshark VPN app. And finally, and this one's really interesting, when I do my weekly podcast Tuesday at Dobbs, a lot of motorbike review websites are not available in Vietnam. I have no idea why that is. So, I'm constantly having to change my virtual location to either the USA or the UK to be able to get these websites. So, there are three real world situations where Surfshark VPN has been extremely useful so far on this trip. And if you would like to give Surfshark a try, and I highly recommend it, you can get four extra months of Surfshark. That's by going to surfshark.com slash freddy and using code freddy at checkout. So, thanks Surfshark for sponsoring the video. I've been going for about half an hour. And right in front of me here, or right behind me here, is a river. So, I want to try and cross this river and then keep heading in that direction directly away from Hanoi. I think in Vietnam they must grow almost all of their own produce because I've never seen fruits and veg grown on such an endless scale. You go through one area and it's nothing but citrus fruit. Lemons and oranges and grapefruits and things like that. Then you get to the next one and it's all green vegetables. And then you get to the herb area. And each area is about 10 miles by 10 miles. And now I'm in the banana plantations. And I've been going for about 15 minutes seeing nothing but banana plantations on my left and right. I hope in 300 meters at the end of this track, there will be a river. I just need to see how big that river is and where I'm going to cross it. That was wishful thinking. Thinking there'd be a ferry to take me across the river here. So, I need to get back on the road. And I think there's a bridge about a kilometre up in that direction that I used to cross this river. How much? 50. Thank you. 40 pence later, that ferry will, it's getting warmer and warmer, take me to the other side of the river there. I paid the lady at the entrance to this road here for a bike and a foot pedestrian coming. But interestingly, very few bridges and these river crossings with boats seem to be the one. It's quite interesting there just in the distance. You can see a Buddhist temple almost right next to that church there. There's the church spire. So they're, I think, predominantly Buddhists in Vietnam, of course, because the French colonized it. And I think, I think the French were here all the way up until about 70 years ago, something like that. There's also a decently significant Christian population here as well. And they're side by side of the churches and the Buddhist, the Buddhist religious buildings. Some of these churches are incredibly ornate. This is due to the French colonial rule. It was in around 1860 that the French came over, invaded and colonized Vietnam. And of course, they brought with them all of their culture and institutionalized Christianity throughout as much of Vietnam as they could. Hence why you're going to see so many churches on any road trip through Vietnam. The French also brought extremely brutal taxation. But eventually, after nearly 100 years, the Vietnamese got sick of the colonial rule and also the heavy taxation, among other things. And there's a big war which eventually led to the French leaving Vietnam in 1954. But they still leave with them a legacy because there are churches all over the place and a lot of the buildings look, I mean, they actually are French in their style. So, for example, in the center of Hanoi, you've got an area called the French Quarter, which I should add, it reminds me a lot of going to Goa where you expect everything to be Hindu. But actually, there are a huge amount of churches and a lot of the architecture is very European. So in a way, it's got a very similar vibe in a lot of areas to Goa in India. Yes, that that is a mountainous range in the distance that can't be any more than it can't be more than five miles away. And that is exactly where I'm going to head. We're right at the end now of the built up area of the Hanoi and surrounding area, and that signals the start of what could be dramatic scenery. I could be there in half an hour. Oh, and I've been traveling for about two hours, so it takes a while to get here. It's been as flat as a pancake for the past three hours, and now suddenly out of nowhere, all of these mountains just jut out out of completely pancake flat land. This kind of landscape here, this is iconic. Hello. This is iconic of Vietnam. 300 meters away, I'm almost certain a storm's coming because the temperature's dropped off and that's a fairly thick layer of cloud that's soon to obscure the vision of the mountain range ahead of me. So I better get going. I've got about 40 minutes of daylight left and I don't have lights on on the scooter. So I need to find somewhere to stay for the night because I at the night or at night with no lights. So I like the idea of just finding a little hotel by the side of the road. But who am I kidding? I need to use hotels.com or booking.com, so I'm going to think I'm going to book somewhere now in a hotel nearby. And it would also be nice to chill out because I've been going for four hours exactly and I am filthy. There's there's so much farming and industrial work going on. There's just dust everywhere. And interestingly, on top of that, you all told me this. Hanoi is, depending on what chart and graph you see, between the fifth and the tenth most polluted city on earth. Hence why I found out in the first video about the second day we got here. They're desperately trying in Hanoi to electrify everything, ban petrol scooters in certainly in the center of Hanoi and make it electric only by 2030. And you can kind of see why, because it's really hard to tell where the smog ends and just cloud slash overcast weather begins. So a few hints of blue sky here, but in general, probably over the past 10 days, you can you can count the amount of little glimmers of blue sky that you see. So I'll get on it. I mean, this bike's so comfortable I could easily ride all day. It's only the sunlight stopping me. And also there's some just you can see in the background stunning scenery here that I want to explore. And it's going to be better if I find a good camp for the night. Settle down, get a bite to eat, clean up. I mean, I've brought no spare clothes, I've just remembered, but that's fine. And then in the morning I've got all this to explore. So let's find somewhere found somewhere. Thirty three US dollars a night reduced from 110. I just have to make it there before the sun sets. It's a good feeling, this arriving well before sunset, because so often when I'm doing a road trip or something like that, whether it's car or motorbike, I always push myself and push myself to the limit. And I'm riding in pitch black, getting to a hotel about nine or 10 p.m. And I hate riding at night. It's just not fun for me. I don't enjoy it. It's so much nicer when you get somewhere nice and early, you can just chill out, soak in an excellent days traveling and adventuring and seeing incredible things. And it just makes it more enjoyable. So I'm delighted to get here at a good time. Booking.com have told a filthy, filthy white lie that there is absolutely zero chance in any scenario that this hotel room would be anywhere near one hundred and ten dollars. It's thirty three dollars reduced from one ten. That's just not true. This is thirty three dollars full stop. There is no reduction. And that translates to British pounds at 19 pounds a night. And that is perfectly reasonable enough for a simple and clean hotel room. So what I'm going to do, I will just sort my stuff and myself out, charge a few devices, and then I'm going to go and try and find something to eat. So I'll probably catch up with you in an hour or so. That was moderately successful. So I had a simple pizza, but it was two pounds, so I can't really complain. And the staff were so extremely friendly. It's all part of the experience. It's fine. I then ordered an orange juice, but so much stuff was lost in translation today. That was it turned out to be an orange juice mixed with milk. So unfortunately, I couldn't have that. Just not my kind of thing. And now I've ordered went past a cafe, ordered a green tea. This doesn't look like green tea. I have no idea what this is. It's got some balls at the bottom. With a thick cream on top. And also, I think this may be an area specialising in snails, because there was one restaurant I went to, it was exclusively snails. I had to put my Apple Translate over it. Everything was snails. Wow, that's sweet. I have no idea what this is. It's quite nice. It's not green tea. Right, I'll wrap it up there. Thanks, everyone, for watching. I'll go and just recharge my batteries and I'll see you all right and early. Oh, I said bright and early, I don't want to say that. I'll see you all tomorrow morning. Oh, and also Surfshark. Do go and check them out if you're interested. I highly recommend it. Surfshark.com slash Freddy. And you'll get that four months extra Surfshark.