One of my favorite things to do in Vietnam is hop on my scooter and just…go.
Not because I have somewhere to be. Quite the opposite.
The best rides are the ones without much of a destination. The ones where you take the smaller roads instead of the highways, wind through endless rice fields, wave at farmers working their land, and stop in tiny villages because a coffee shop looks interesting…or because someone points you toward a beach you didn’t even know existed.
Once you leave the tourist trail, Vietnam becomes something completely different. It’s quieter. Friendlier. Slower. It’s where you stumble across old men playing board games over tea, neighborhood bakeries with incense curling beside pastry cases, and little everyday moments that never make it into guidebooks but somehow stay with you longer than anything else.
So when Le and I realized we had five days off with no work, we figured…why not take a scooter trip?
The Southern Roadtip Plan
Our original plan was to head south. We’d mapped out a route, picked stops along the way, and had just enough structure to feel like we knew what we were doing.
Then the weather stepped in.
Either the night before we left…or maybe the morning of…we checked the forecast and saw a storm rolling up the southern coast.
One look at each other was all it took.
“North?”
“North.”
Just like that, we scrapped the plan, pointed our scooters toward Hanoi, and set off with nothing more than a rough direction and a whole lot of confidence that we’d figure it out as we went.
For the first couple of days, it was exactly what we imagined.
We’d stop for coffee and end up watching two older men locked in a slow, serious board game over tea. Another café had a sleepy local dog that wandered over, climbed into my lap, and just settled there like I was part of the furniture…content to be petted like I’d always belonged.
We shared tea with a monk at a small monastery, the kind of quiet conversation that doesn’t really need many words. We watched local fishermen casually repairing their nets like time didn’t matter at all. We took backroads that opened into sweeping views of rice fields and coastline, stopped for snacks beside lakes where nothing much happened except the water moving gently with the wind. And somewhere along the way, we accidentally came across ancient-looking gates and weathered stone structures with no signs, no context, no explanation…just standing there like they had always been part of the landscape.
No checklist. No rush. Just the joy of drifting.
Then somewhere along the way, the trip shifted.
While exploring a small ancient village in the middle of nowhere, Le’s scooter decided it had its own opinion about the journey.
She pulled the brake lever…and nothing really happened.
Not exactly the sound you want to hear halfway through a long road trip.
But this is Vietnam, where it seems like scooter repair shops appear every few hundred meters no matter how remote you get. We coasted into one without much drama, and the mechanic took one look at the bike and got straight to work, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
While he fixed the brakes, Le and I wandered through the village and found a small café. We sat down, had a coffee, and watched life happen at its usual unhurried pace.
By the time we got back on the road, something in us had shifted too.
We were tired.
Not tired of Vietnam.
Not tired of the experience.
Just tired of riding.
Somewhere between the winding roads, long distances, and daily routine of ride–sleep–repeat, our “slow adventure” had quietly turned into something else entirely.
We weren’t really exploring anymore.
We were commuting.
And somewhere in that realization came the bigger truth.
We didn’t actually need to get to Hanoi.
We just thought we did.
And let me tell you…Hanoi is a lot farther from Hoi An than it looks on a map.
So over coffee in that little village we hadn’t planned to visit, we changed the plan.
“What if we just ship the scooters on the train?”
The idea landed instantly.
The more we talked about it, the more obvious it became that this was the right call. We didn’t need to “push through.” We didn’t need to finish anything. We just needed to enjoy the part of the trip we still had control over.
So we headed to the train station.
Eventually, after a bit of wandering and mild confusion, we found the freight office. The staff walked us through everything with ease, wrapped up the scooters, and loaded them onto the train like this was just another Tuesday.
And just like that, our bikes were heading south without us.
The only catch was that they wouldn’t arrive at the same time we did.
Which meant we’d be scooter-less for a few days when we got back.
Worth it.
The train ride home was unexpectedly perfect.
After days of gripping handlebars and scanning the road ahead, sitting back in a train seat felt like exhaling for the first time in days. Vietnam rolled past the window in soft layers—coastlines, villages, mountains fading into mist—none of it requiring our attention, just our presence.
The train ride back ended up being one of my favorite parts of the entire trip.
It was the first time in the trip we weren’t “getting somewhere.”
We were just…going.
I spent most of my time in the dining car, watching the crew prepare meals from scratch on a moving train. Not pre-packaged, not reheated, but actually peeling potatoes, chopping ingredients, and mixing fillings right there as we rattled along the tracks. There was something strangely comforting about it…this little kitchen in motion, steaming pots and clinking pans while Vietnam rolled past the windows outside.
And honestly, I had one of the best meals of the whole trip while sitting there, eating as the landscape drifted by—fields, villages, stretches of coastline—all passing quietly in the background like a moving painting.
We played a few hands of cards, laughed a little, and mostly just settled into doing absolutely nothing in the best possible way.
It felt like the perfect exhale after days on the road.
A soft landing to the end of an unexpected journey.
We never made it to Hanoi.
And I’m completely okay with that.
What I remember most isn’t the destination we didn’t reach. It’s the coffee stops, the side roads, the village mechanic fixing brakes like it was second nature, the strangers who appeared exactly when needed, and the quiet realization that sometimes the plan you start with isn’t the one you’re meant to finish.
Hanoi will still be there.
But this trip reminded me of something I keep relearning in different ways.
Sometimes the best part of the journey is knowing when to change direction.
A Re-Discovered Life 