The Companion.

The bike I rode was a 155cc Yamaha XSR, and I chose it on purpose. I did not want plush. I did not want a soft touring couch that babies you down the road. I wanted something with a little bite to it, and this was exactly that, and the funny thing is it still fit me like it was made for me. I am six foot one, two hundred and five pounds, and the reach to the bars and the way it sat under me felt right from the first mile, my hands, my frame, all of it. Honestly, it rode pretty smooth. It made me feel like Indiana Jones, like the kind of machine a man rides into somewhere he is not sure he should be going. From the second I threw a leg over it, this bike and I were in it together.

Why this bike.

The XSR is Yamaha’s neo-retro, built on the design language they call Faster Sons, and it is a genuinely beautiful machine: a sculpted teardrop tank, a clean flat seat, a single round LED headlamp that bridges a 1970s cafe racer and something built this year, and mine was finished in matte black from nose to tail. The XSR name carries real weight in the motorcycle world, too. The line is so well regarded that its smaller sibling, the XSR125, was just named Motorcycle of the Year in Japan, the first Yamaha ever to take that title. That is the family I was riding. I did not pick it to be comfortable. I picked it because it looked the part and felt the part, and over five days in the mountains it turned out to be far more than a good-looking bike.

It read my mind.

Here is what that bike did for me. It hugged the road, every curve of it, and there are thousands of them up here. It sipped gas. It never once gave me a problem, never broke down, never left me stranded in a place where stranded would have been a real situation. It held my luggage and my straps without complaint, the shocks soaked up terrain that should have rattled my teeth out, and the headlight and the high beam carved a path through pitch-black mountain nights when there was nothing else out there to see by. It never fishtailed on me, not once, and I rolled it through gravel, through mud, through water, up and down a loop that throws every kind of surface at you. When I hit the throttle, it went. When I hit the brakes, it stopped, and I leaned on that back brake more than anything, and it never stepped out from under me. The clutch was light and easy. The whole machine read my mind most of the time, and out there, alone, that is not a small thing. There is a saying about roads like this, that the smart move and the brave move are usually the same move, and the move is patience. This bike taught me that as much as the road did. It never rushed me, and it never let me down. And it was not just transport. Out there it became my recliner too. There were stretches where I would just pull over and sit back on the bike, feet up on the handlebars, the back of my head resting on my duffel bag, eating a piece of dragon fruit or sipping some water, soaking in the rivers and the landscapes of the Hà Giang loop. My riding partner and my rest stop, all in one machine.

The decision at the river.

I was up at the far end of the loop, in the Mèo Vạc area where the Mã Pí Lèng Pass looks down on the Nho Quế River, the most famous water on the whole ride. I had a prior commitment back home that Monday, the very next day, and I needed to be back in Hanoi for it. So at two o’clock in the afternoon, Indochina time, I had a real decision to make, because Hanoi was an eleven-hour ride away. This would be the longest single ride of my life, by a long way. The farthest I had ever gone before this was Greenville, South Carolina to Myrtle Beach in a day, about five hours with multiple stops, and that one stretched me, but it was all highway, straight and predictable and doable. This was the opposite of that. No highway. Nothing but curves and cliffs and elevation and a hundred things I could not see coming, on what is rightly called one of the deadliest roads in Southeast Asia, and I was about to ride it into the night, because there was no version of this where I got home before two in the morning.

Eleven hours in the dark.

And I want to tell you the truth about that ride, which is that I was not afraid. I had faith, and I had willpower, and I had my companion under me. The XSR and I did this together. She got me there, and I guided her there, and somewhere in the dark that stopped feeling like a figure of speech. The sun dropped while I was still only halfway off the mountain, and then it was just the headlight and the cold and the loops, no street lamps, no reflectors, no guardrails, just the two of us threading it. I passed semi trucks. I dodged potholes I felt more than saw. I ate more bugs than I could count, splattered across my goggles, gravel kicking up off the road and stinging my face, crossing loose rock and running through villages where the last kids still up must have figured this filthy foreigner was hopelessly lost. And I counted it down the way you count down anything that hurts. Eleven hours became seven. Seven became four. Four became three, then two. I stopped once to fill the tank and then we kept going, the bike and I, all the way home.

Hanoi, two in the morning.

I rolled into Hanoi, on the outskirts of the Old Quarter, at two in the morning, and I had barely eaten anything this entire trip. All I had put in my body that day was a dragon fruit, an Asian pear, an apple, and about two liters of water. That was it for the past eleven hours. I was starving. And there is no better thing to eat at two a.m. coming off a ride like that than an egg bánh mì and a cold beer. I caught a little roadside spot just as the owners were closing, a mom-and-pop, family-run bánh mì shop, and they took one look at me, the bike caked in mud and debris, insects all over my goggles and my helmet, and from the way I climbed off that bike and the way I was walking, you could tell I had just had a rough, rough ride back to Hanoi, back to the Old Quarter. They smiled, said xin chào, and waved me over to sit down on the curb, and through Google Translate they told me whatever I wanted, they would make it. I ordered two egg bánh mì and asked for two waters, and they told me no, no water, you deserve a cold beer. They said I had earned it, and then they talked me right up to five. You need five beers, they said. So I did what anyone would do. I ate my two bánh mì and drank three of the five, sitting right there on the curb in the dark, filthy and grinning, and they hit the spot like almost nothing in my life ever has. I raised one to my XSR, because the two of us had finally made it home.

What the loop gave me.

I made it back in time for my commitment, and I will tell you plainly, the Hà Giang Loop is no joke. That is a ride of a ride. It was a reset and a reckoning at the same time, a challenge to me mentally and physically, the kind of thing that tests your willpower for real. But my focus never strayed. I stayed on the road, I paid attention, I kept safety first the whole way, and I came out the other side with something I will carry for as long as I ride. Those eleven hours from the river back to Hanoi, run in one shot the way I did, I would not suggest that to anyone. Break it up. Ride back down and spend a night at the An Châng Retreat and Spa before you make the second half into Hanoi, because that place is built for exactly that, for relaxation, rest, and reset.

And it would not have been any other bike. I would not have ridden this on anything but that Yamaha XSR 155. It is one hell of a machine. It did exactly what I needed it to do, and it was a smooth ride the whole way through. It let me cruise, it gave me power when I asked for it, and I rode in style most of the time. I got to become one with the bike, and that is what every rider is after, to become one with the machine underneath him. Especially when you are taking on something massive like the Hà Giang Loop, you want a bike that is comfortable, that gives you power, and that is reliable all at the same time, and that is exactly what this one did for me.

And if you are ever in Vietnam, or honestly anywhere, and you are after a ride that is comfortable, stylish, and built to be enjoyed, I would highly recommend the Yamaha XSR series, whether you buy one or rent one. It comes in the 125, the 155, the 700, and the 900, and the right one really comes down to how you plan to ride and how much engine you want underneath you. The road is yours. You just need the right bike underneath you, and the faith to ride it.