Day 3 of our Top Gear Moto 2 tour︱Vietnam Motorbike Tours

The top gear tour with Vietnam motorbike tours. 10 days of pure bucket list riding. And today it's the Ho Chi Minh trail. Arguably the best riding of the entire trip, with endless corners through epic mountain scenery. It's time to see the real Vietnam. It's a misty morning in Khe San, as we head off to fuel up and meet the locals. The Vietnamese love their soppy love songs, so our guys indulge in a bit of early morning romance. Guys, a very special thing we have this morning is an appearance from the blonde guy on Chips. He's actually too young to remember the show. That makes you Eric Estrada. Who's that? Come on guys. Chips, I'm not that old. Mate, I think he's writing you a ticket. It's time to see the real Vietnam. Whether it's a back road or the main highway, we often have to share the road with these guys. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. These characters usually spectate, but sometimes hit the road as well. In terms of pure riding enjoyment, today promises to be the best riding of the trip. Even if we are still being stalked by this suspicious character. We are heading for the Western Ho Chi Minh trail, a concrete slab road that twists through misty mountains, thick jungle, blue rivers, and isolated ethnic minority hamlets. There are countless corners, a grippy surface, and barely any traffic. It's a rider's dream come true. It's a beautiful, rugged part of Vietnam, and we stop regularly at places like this waterfall to soak it all in. The Ho Chi Minh trail was a complex network of trails and roads built by the North Vietnamese to move men and equipment during the war. The USA later said it was one of the great achievements of military engineering in the 20th century because the trail was able to effectively supply troops despite the most intense bombing campaign in history, with bombs being dropped on average every seven minutes along the trail network. This western part of the Ho Chi Minh trail carves its way through very difficult terrain in one of the most remote areas. It was also the most heavily bombed part of the network. Originally the Ho Chi Minh trail used existing foot tracks that had existed for centuries. Equipment was lugged on people's backs, heavily loaded bicycles, and ox carts. But as the war escalated, the North Vietnamese rapidly developed road networks and fleets of Bases provided food, housing, medical care, and guides to the next way station. By 1965, the Ho Chi Minh trail involved 24,000 men, six truck transport battalions, two bicycle transport battalions, a boat transport battalion, eight engineer battalions, and 45 liaison stations. Everything was concealed by dense forest and also man-made camouflage. The concrete slab highway we are riding on is relatively recent. The Ho Chi Minh trail is seen as such an important part of Vietnam's history that even though this road gets so little traffic, the government has spent piles of money on a lasting quality road. And it's all a massive bonus for us. This section is often regarded as one of the ultimate bucket list motorbike rides internationally. All this cornering is hard work and builds up a big hunger. Time for lunch. Can you hear the lambs, Claris? Can you hear the lambs? Hello. Can you see why people like you haven't been to bed today? Well, it's because you're such an ordinary host, mate. We don't have enough food. Going on, mate? A bit of training? A bit of training for the Vietnam trip. I'm trying to get ready for Dakar 2020. And finally, our introduction to the Vietnamese toilet, at least in the more remote regions. Awesome. KTM Prototype 2020. Yeah, mate. This is my latest rip-off. You going to take it into Dakar? Yeah, maybe. I was going to do Baja first. Is this your parachute for slowing it down? Yeah. Yeah, it is. And beer. I don't use Red Bull, I just go beer. Warm beer. Occasionally as we ride through villages, it looks as though there's money on the road. As a starving YouTube blogger, I'm very tempted to stop and grab handfuls of cash, but I don't want to drop behind the group too much. I finally found out what the go is at this brief stop when our guides explained. It's interesting, guys. If you look around, you can see $100 US bills. This is funeral money. They believe if you bury somebody with this stuff, they will come back reincarnated richer. Talking about our guides, our support crew were incredibly helpful through the trip. Cooking lunch, running errands, making sure everyone was happy. And it went beyond supporting us. They would even support random transport trucks up the steep climbs. Mind you, they are cheeky buggers too. Crazy sense of humour, little practical jokes, complete nutters. What happens in Vietnam stays in Vietnam. However, we gave as good as we got, and Bao would often find someone had pulled his spark plug cap off as payback. Usual suspect? Toby Price, no doubt. Let's chat with the ladies and see how the trip is going so far. It's amazing. It's the best thing. We come from England and up from Norfolk. It's really flat and you've just got to come to Vietnam. It's the best place and it's the best holiday we've ever had. You said last night that you're going to cry. Why is it the best trip? So you've not been out of your village at home or have you travelled in other parts of the world or what? It is a pretty special place. Am I allowed to swear? You can swear if you like. No, it's just an amazing place. We've travelled all over the world. We've been to Africa and Australia and New Zealand and Vietnam and this trip has completely blown me away. It's the best thing I've ever done in my life and I'll be back. I'll be coming back. It's just amazing and I'm going to cry when it ends. Oh, you're going to make me cry too. I did Vietnam two years ago from south to north but nothing like this. I mean, I thought I'd done it and I just thought I'd be a little bit bored but it's completely amazing. Don't come to Vietnam and go on a bus because you will never see anyone. Or a train. Or a train or anything else. You can only come to Vietnam on a motorbike because you'll never see the culture, the landscapes, the mountains, the tea fields, the people. Everyone waving at you. I think with that said though, like we tell all our riders, our tours are definitely for experienced riders only unless of course you're riding as a pillion with an experience rider. But yeah, for sure. I mean we go to, as you've seen, we go to places that are yet to even be discovered by the outside world. Yeah. There's people in the villages that have never seen Westerners and they are just amazed by us. Like we're amazed by how they live and it's just, this isn't spoiled and if you want to see it now, you've got to come now because I think one day when Jason's company has got bigger that's going to be, everybody's going to know about it. But no one will know about it now. Yeah, well it's a pleasure having you both riding with us and we've still got a couple more days. Cheers. Thank you. So that was the Western Ho Chi Minh trail. Later that night we tried to estimate how many corners we did with guesses between a gazillion or a bazillion and maybe seven straight bits. All of this was through epic mountain scenery. Much of Vietnam has these limestone mountains that have eroded into very distinctive shapes. It also tends to form a lot of caves and we'll be checking out some of the incredible cave systems later. We've come to expect classy accommodation and tonight will be no exception. This idyllic spot on the river. Helmets off, beers open. What a ride!