The Trade-Off: Motorcycle Life in Southeast Asia

There’s a moment, somewhere on the winding roads of Hi Van Pass, where the engine hums beneath, the hairpin curve ahead is blind, and you’re inches from a sheer drop off a cliff into the sea below. You should slow down, play it safe. Instead, you lean in.

Riding motorbikes in Southeast Asia is the ultimate trade-off—one part liberation, one part mortal danger. It’s the closest thing to flying without wings, an open invitation to the road where you call the shots. But to many of my friends back home, it’s lunacy. A death wish on two wheels. “Are you crazy!?” they ask, horrified. I’ve seen the statistics, the numbers aren’t pretty - Thailand has one of the highest motorcycle fatality rates in the world and accidents involving tourists are a big part of it. Vietnam and Bali aren’t much better, with thousands of deaths a year, many of them foreigners who thought a rented scooter was as harmless as a bicycle.

Some people refuse to get on the back of a motorbike taxi, sticking only to air-conditioned taxis stuck in the traffic chaos of Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, the helmets are flimsy plastic barely worthy of the name. Yes, the driver will probably go too fast, slicing between cars in a way that makes your stomach drop. But if you think those guys don’t know the risk, someone who’s been dodging traffic since they were twelve, then maybe the real danger isn’t the motorcycle - it’s your own arrogance.

And yet, on the scooter I am. There I always am.

I grew up ripping motorbikes through the dirt berms of my rural hometown, riding to see my mate 10 km down the road. This isn’t new to me. But here, in the highlands of northern Thailand or the coastal roads of Vietnam, the stakes feel different. The rules are fewer, the risks are yours alone to manage. No safety nets, no hand-holding. Just you, the road, and the knowledge that a single mistake could be your last.

But isn’t that the point?

Everywhere I go, I see the same scene: three kids stacked onto one 125cc Honda, weaving through trucks on the wrong side of a busy inner city road. A father steering one-handed while balancing a bag of concrete on his lap. In Bali, I’ve been overtaken on the mountain curves by teenagers riding much faster, while his younger brother is waving back and me, and beckoning me on. It’s not recklessness - it’s just life here revolves around the Honda, life was experienced on the back of a Honda Dream.

But are we talking a different understanding of risk. A different trust in fate? We westerners come from cultures obsessed with minimising danger. Helmets, insurance, rules, guardrails—necessary, sure, but suffocating. Here, the road is an equaliser. You take your chances, wear as much or as little safety gear as you want, and no one is there to save you but yourself. Some call it irresponsible. I call it pure.

No doubt, this is no place to learn. If you’ve never handled a bike before, this is trial by fire. And yet, I can’t imagine another way to see this part of the world. There’s nothing like flowing through Ho Chi Minh in the hive mind of scooters, or aggressively riding mountain roads up in Northern Thailand, or popping down to whatever beach first catches your eye in Nusa Penida. Some places are meant to be seen at 60 km/h with the sun and wind in your face.

Sure, there are risks—some of them measured, some of them not. There are things you carry just in case, small precautions that might smooth out the worst encounters. The occasional unexpected “fee” that helps you keep moving. But none of it outweighs the feeling of watching the sunrise from a roadside shack, coffee in hand, bike waiting just outside, the whole road ahead still yours to claim.

We all make our own peace with risk. Some avoid it. Some manage it. And some, like me, find it addicting. Broken bones can still heal, but regret lingers. And I’m not stopping anytime soon.