Is it possible to travel from Dien Bien Phu to Lai Châu by motorbike?
I have a question that is very similar to "Hanoi to Mai Chau by motorbike", "Mai Chau to Son La by motorbike" & "Son La to Dien Bien Phu by motorbike" but for Son La to Dien Bien Phu.
A friend and I plan to go from Dien Bien Phu to Lai Châu by motorbike (around 200km). Each of us will drive a Honda Win 110cc. As for the other related questions I have only found a couple of articles mentioning this route so I'd just like to get feedback from more travellers.
The QL12 national road followed by the QL4D national road seem to be the simplest way to do this journey, however I wonder if there is more convenient route (e.g. less traffic, or better scenery)?
Best Answer
I ended up taking the QL12 national road followed by the QL4D national road as researched before.
I was hoping to do that journey by bus by putting the motorbike in the bus (yes they do it usually!) & get some rest in the bus. But they did not want to do it, so had to ride again & for a tougher ride this time.
The road was really bad. It was very neglected compared to the other roads I took before (Hanoi to Mai Chai to Son La to Dien Bien Phu). From what I remember, maybe 50% of the journey was terrible (narrow & many times very damaged). This could get a little scary in some places, so ride carefully.
I think it took a total of 6h (with 1h break).
Lai Châu is a very funny/strange place. It has epic avenues, it is very spread out & has big buildings (governmental I guess) but there is not many people who seem to actually live there. A place of interest if you want to see the weird side of Communism in Vietnam I suppose.
Other resources
I bumped into a Spanish blog having an article about the "Dien Bien Phu to Lai Châu" route. The nice part is, they shared the GPS tracking for the journey at the bottom of the article. You can also directly find this "Dien Bien Phu to Lai Châu"" GPS track on Wikiloc.
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🇻🇳 Battle of Dien Bien Phu: CRATER at A1 HILL to End French Indochina War {Dien Bien Phu, VIETNAM}
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Images: Midhun Madhu, Tom Fisk, Rachel Claire, Hồng Xuân Viên