The route is the line on the map. The plan is everything around it. This article is only about the line: how to build a motorcycle route in Vietnam that actually works, with fuel stops, rest stops, and enough slack that one bad hour does not cost you the whole day.
Most route-planning guides are either an advertisement for one app or somebody’s itinerary from a trip three years ago. What follows is a method, not an itinerary, and it does not depend on any particular tool. You can do it in Google Maps, in a dedicated planner, or with a pen and a sheet of paper — because what matters is not the software, it is the order in which you ask the questions.
If you need the whole pre-trip process rather than just the route, read motorcycle trip planning in six steps. If you already have a route and just want the app configured properly, the settings are in Google Maps as a motorcycle route planner.
Start with anchors: where you sleep and must-see stops
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Do not open the map and start dragging. Start with a very short list of two kinds of points:
- Sleep points. Every night you have to be somewhere. This is the hardest constraint in the whole route, because it is tied to sunset.
- Must-see points. One or two places that, if you skipped them, would make the trip pointless — a particular pass, a village, a market that only runs on one day of the week.
These are your anchors. Put them on the map first, then connect them. Doing it the other way round — drawing the line first and looking for a bed afterwards — is the single most common reason riders finish a day somewhere dark with nothing around.
One small habit that pays for itself: for every night, write down a fallback town sitting about 20–30 riding minutes before your main sleep point. When a day runs slow, you already have somewhere to stop instead of hunting for a room while you ride.
Once the anchors are in place, you connect them. And that connection is not measured in kilometres.
Plan by time, not just distance
A map gives you a theoretical duration, usually calculated for a car on good roads moving continuously. Nobody rides like that. A real riding day is made of three different blocks of time, and the map only counts the first one:
- Rolling time. This is the number the map hands you.
- Planned stops: fuel, food, stretching your legs, photographs.
- Unplanned stops: wrong turns, rain, roadworks, asking directions, fatigue.
A route that only accounts for the first block is not finished. The right order is to decide first how many hours you are willing to sit on a bike each day, and only then see how far that gets you — rather than picking a destination and squeezing the clock to fit.
This article gives no standard daily distance or hour count, because no single number is right for everyone. It depends on whether you have ridden long days before, what bike you are on, how much luggage you carry, and how much of the route is mountain. What you need is not a number borrowed from a stranger, but the habit of adding your own stop time to every leg.
Mountain roads, weather and daylight
These three push on the same thing: your real average speed, which is almost always lower than the figure on screen.
Mountain roads. The same hundred kilometres on a pass and on the flat are two different trips in time and in effort. Passes mean constant corners, limited sight lines, and long stretches where you simply cannot hold a steady speed. When the route crosses the mountains, treat the map’s duration as a floor, not an estimate.
Weather. Rain does not only slow you down; it makes you stop more often and tire faster. One heavy downpour on a pass can erase an afternoon.
Daylight. This is the hardest constraint and the easiest to forget while planning from a desk at home. Look up the sunset time for the area on the actual dates you will be there, then subtract about an hour and treat that as your arrival deadline. On mountain and rural roads, darkness removes almost everything you use to read the surface: cracks, loose gravel, mud, potholes, livestock on the carriageway.
Picking scenic roads and avoiding expressways and truck routes
In Vietnam, avoiding expressways is not a style preference, it is the law. Under clause 3, article 25 of the Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety No. 36/2024/QH15, motorcycles, mopeds and similar vehicles are not permitted on expressways (except people and vehicles servicing the maintenance and management of the expressway itself). The practical consequence for route planning: if a mapping app returns a route that uses an expressway, that route is wrong for your vehicle from the start. Check the vehicle mode before you trust the duration it shows you.
National highways are a different matter. You may ride them — you just should not always want to. Three road types you will be choosing between:
- National highways (quốc lộ). Fastest, most fuel stations, and the most trucks and intercity buses. Useful for the stretches you only want to get through.
- Provincial and inter-commune roads (tỉnh lộ). Slower, quieter, better scenery, less predictable surface. This is where the trip actually happens.
- Minor and unpaved roads. Only if you know their current condition and know the bike you rented suits them.
A simple combination that works well: use the national highway to clear the populated area early in the day, then switch to provincial roads for the middle of it. You save time on the dullest section and spend it on the best one.
One warning. Satellite and street imagery can be years out of date. A road that looks perfect in a photograph may be under repair, or may have lost a section to a landslide. For minor roads, the most reliable check is still a local or your rental shop — they hear back from riders every week.
Fuel, food and rest stops
Once the line is drawn, walk it again on the map and mark the stops. A route without stops is only half built.
Fuel. On national highways, stations are frequent. On mountain roads and in remote districts, the gaps get longer and opening hours less predictable. The route-building rule: before every long mountain leg, mark a fill-up in the last town before the climb, and top up at around half a tank rather than waiting for the last bar. Do not assume every station shown on the map is open — map data does not track the closing times of small rural pumps.
Food. In the mountains, places to eat cluster in towns and thin out badly between passes. When you split the day, make lunch land in a town rather than halfway up a long climb. Carry water and something dry for when the timing slips.
Rest. Schedule breaks by the clock, not by feel, because the feeling of fatigue arrives later than the fatigue does. At each stop do three things: drink, walk for a few minutes to loosen up, and glance over the bike — tyres, brakes, lights, luggage still strapped tight.
Cash. In mountain areas, many small fuel stations and guesthouses take neither cards nor transfers. Treat the last reliable ATM before you head into the remote stretch as a waypoint worth marking, exactly like a fuel stop.
If you are renting by the day and the route is long, two things are worth settling before you lock it in: any mileage limit in the agreement, and the fuel level at pickup. These two articles cover how to ask and what to check: asking about mileage limits for a rental and checking the fuel level at pickup.
Saving and sharing the route (GPX, offline maps)
A route that exists only in your head will disappear exactly when you need it most — when the phone dies, when you lose signal on a pass, or when you need to tell someone at home where you are going today.
One file-format detail trips people up constantly. Google My Maps exports KML or KMZ, not GPX; individual layers can additionally be exported as CSV. GPX is the common format for dedicated navigation apps and GPS units, so if you intend to move a route between two different tools, confirm in advance that both actually read the same format instead of assuming they do.
Three things to do before you leave wifi behind:
- Download offline maps for the whole corridor you will ride, not just around the destination. Plenty of mountain sections have no mobile signal, which is precisely when you need the map.
- Send the route to somebody at home, with the day-by-day schedule and the names of your accommodation. They do not need to read a map; they need to know where you were going today.
- Keep a copy that needs no battery. A screenshot saved to the phone, or the chain of town names written in order on paper. A list of place names on paper still gets you directions when the phone is dead.
And keep the rental shop’s number in both places: in the phone and on paper.
Plan B for heavy rain and landslides
Plan B is not a second route drawn in advance. It is a set of rules you agree with yourself beforehand, so you are not making the decision while standing on a pass as the light goes.
For heavy rain, flash floods and landslides in the mountains, the official source is the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (nchmf.gov.vn). The site carries dedicated sections for dangerous weather, flash floods and landslides and land subsidence, alongside a ten-day forecast. This is information that changes daily and cannot be inferred from general experience, so check it again on the morning of each riding day rather than once while planning.
Three rules worth fixing before you go:
- If there is a landslide warning on today’s route, do you stay an extra night or take the longer, lower detour? Decide in advance.
- If your deadline passes and you have not reached the main sleep point, you stop at the fallback town. No renegotiating with yourself at that hour.
- If the bike breaks down, the first move is to call the rental shop, not to start taking things apart. Ask before you book: what happens if the bike fails a few hundred kilometres from Hanoi, and how long does it take to sort out.
A trip cut short is still a trip. A route that cannot change when the weather does is not a finished route.
Final route check before you leave
Walk the line one last time and tick off each item:
- Every day has a confirmed sleep point and a fallback town before it
- Every leg has your own stop time added, not the raw map figure
- Every day’s expected arrival is before the daylight deadline
- No section of the route uses an expressway
- Every long mountain leg has a fill-up marked before it
- Lunch lands in a town, not halfway up a pass
- The last ATM before the remote stretch is marked
- Offline maps downloaded for the whole corridor
- Route and daily schedule sent to someone at home
- A copy of the route that needs no battery
- Rain, flash flood and landslide warnings checked for the corridor
- Three Plan B rules agreed
- Last day left open as a buffer, with nothing fixed in it
Luggage and how to load it is covered separately in the motorcycle trip packing list.
Frequently asked questions
How detailed should a motorcycle route be?
Detailed where it is rigid, loose where it is not. Sleep points, the fill-up before each mountain leg and the daylight deadline should be fixed in advance. The order of sightseeing stops within a day should stay open — that is the part that makes the trip enjoyable, and also the part you can sacrifice when a day runs slow.
Can motorcycles use expressways in Vietnam?
No. Under clause 3, article 25 of the Law on Road Traffic Order and Safety No. 36/2024/QH15, motorcycles, mopeds and similar vehicles are not permitted on expressways. When you build a route, set the correct vehicle mode in your mapping app and check the result, because car mode will happily send you down roads you are not allowed to use.
Can Google Maps export a GPX file?
Google My Maps exports KML or KMZ, and individual layers can be exported as CSV — there is no GPX option. If you need GPX to load a route into another app or a GPS device, check which formats your chosen tool reads before departure day, rather than discovering the mismatch the night before.
Where do I check landslide and flash flood warnings?
The National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting at nchmf.gov.vn has dedicated sections for dangerous weather, flash floods, and landslides and land subsidence. Check it again on the morning of each riding day, not just once during planning, because this information changes daily.
Does the route change depending on the type of bike?
It changes with the terrain you choose. A scooter has less engine braking on a long descent, so the hand brakes do more of the work. If your route is mountain-heavy and you are carrying luggage, discuss the bike type with the rental shop before you lock the route in, rather than fixing the route and choosing the bike afterwards.
How much should I trust the duration the map shows?
Treat it as rolling time in good conditions, with no breaks, fuel, photographs or problems included. Use it as a floor and add your own stop time on top — do not use it as an expected arrival time.
Before you lock in the route
Sketch the route first, then bring that exact route to Mr Tú: which bike suits this corridor, whether the daily legs are realistic, and what happens if the bike fails a long way from Hanoi. Those three answers will shape the route better than any sample itinerary downloaded off the internet.
Going long-distance? This guide covers routing a single stretch. If you are planning a multi-week journey across the country, see the Vietnam trip planning framework, which covers corridor choice and the geographic bottlenecks.
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