Son Tra Bikes

Rode to Hue and back over three days. The Versys eats bad road surface and the wind protection actually works at 90. Deposit is high here — plan for it.

Took the MT-03 for a week and rode Hai Van twice. The bike pulls properly on the open sections — a scooter would have been miserable there. Linh knows the roads and marked three viewpoints on my map that were not on Google. Two-up with backpacks it gets cramped on long stretches, worth knowing.

Bike was ready and honest for the price. Pickup point is not central and I lost half an hour finding it — the map pin was off by a block.

First time on a scooter ever. They took me to an empty lot and let me practise for twenty minutes before handing over the keys properly. That is not standard here and it mattered.

Good bike, fair company. The paperwork was only in Vietnamese and they translated verbally — I would have preferred something written I could actually read.

Rode this all over Son Tra including the broken concrete sections up to the pagoda. The raised suspension is not marketing — an NMAX would have been unpleasant there. Only note: at 162 cm I was on tiptoes at lights.

Best bike-to-road match in Da Nang if you can actually ride. Light, brakes hard, and the pass is genuinely fun on it. Not a beginner machine — a guy at my hostel took one after two days on a scooter and dropped it in the first hour.

If you actually hold a motorcycle licence, take the MT-03 and do the pass early in the morning. Empty road, cold air, the bike is more than enough. Do not take it as your first ever bike.

My first manual bike and the right choice for it — 155 cc never surprises you and stalling in traffic is survivable. Did Hai Van solo without issue. No storage at all is more annoying than it sounds; everything lives on your back.

Da Nang to Phong Nha and back over five days. The 17-litre tank means you stop when you want to, not when you have to. Screen and upright position make four-hour days genuinely comfortable. In the city it is tall and I would not want it as a daily bike.

Took it into the hills west of the city where the tarmac runs out. Slow on the way there — 80 km/h is its happy limit and it buzzes above that — but once the surface got bad it was the only sensible choice. Dropped it once, no damage.