Planning and travel to Vietnam

Kiki
Jun 11, 2025
3 min read

We spent a long time deciding where to go on our first trip, and we had actually already finalized our plans for Indonesia.

But then we saw a video about Vietnam and immediately fell in love with the country.

So we started planning our trip to Vietnam.

We researched buses and trains in Vietnam and, after much deliberation, decided to travel the entire distance from south to north, almost 4,000 km, by motorbike.

I had just gotten my motorbike license shortly before we left Germany to live in Paphos, Cyprus.

Well, the planning started all over again, and of course, many questions arose.

But we were lucky enough to meet a couple through a video who had traveled this exact route by motorbike.

We watched all their videos over and over again and took notes on every possible tip and detail.

Once we had meticulously documented everything, the two of them published a fantastic motorbike guide for Vietnam, and we followed their exact route.

But there was still a long way to go before then, as we had to take care of some paperwork in Paphos, and only after all that was done could we start planning in detail.

There were so many things to consider, because we only wanted to fly with hand luggage and, of course, we also had to remember that our luggage had to fit on the motorbike.

We set a date so that we could finally start planning in detail in mid-April 2025.

The luggage was really difficult; we ended up putting everything on our guest bed and constantly rearranging things because we had stuff there that we didn't even need.

And we still packed way too much.

Rainer ordered the motorcycles and took care of a 90-day visa. That wasn't easy at all, but we found a great website to apply for the visa.

I planned our journey by bus, plane, and our first accommodation in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Since we were traveling for over 30 hours in total to reach our first accommodation, we decided to book a business class flight from Larnaca to Bangkok.

Thanks to our accumulated points, that was incredibly easy.

We set off on May 13th (no, not a Friday) by bus to Paphos Airport, and from there we'll take another bus to Larnaca Airport.

That went really well, even though the buses were very full.

In Larnaca, we were able to get through security quickly using the express lane and spent the waiting time in the beautiful lounge.

From Larnaca, we flew to Vienna, and from there, three hours later, we continued on to Bangkok. On this flight, we truly experienced business class.

We were greeted with a glass of champagne and a superb five-course meal.

After that, we converted our seats into a bed and slept until the excellent breakfast.

Upon arriving in Bangkok, we unfortunately encountered our first hurdle: since we didn't have connecting flights, we had to collect our luggage and then check it in again.

Unfortunately, we hadn't considered that we would also need a visa for Thailand. Thankfully, we had planned enough time between flights, as the whole process took almost an hour and a half.

Once we finally got our luggage, we were able to check it in again without any problems for our onward flight to Vietnam, allowing us to have a leisurely meal.

The connecting flight to Vietnam turned out to be a bit difficult. First, we were already almost an hour late, then we couldn't board because of a storm in Bangkok.

Then we were finally able to board, but unfortunately, we couldn't take off because lightning struck the aircraft's technical equipment.

All in all, we finally took off for Saigon three hours behind schedule.

We thought the taxi ride from the airport to our accommodation would take about 15 minutes. Unfortunately, neither the taxi driver nor the security guards could find the apartment in the block where we had booked for a week. It took us almost two hours to find it, and we were relieved to have finally arrived.