When Dylan Ozanich and his girlfriend took a 1,800km road trip from Hoi An to Phnom Penh a few months back, they bought an old Honda Dream which they dubbed the “Red Rocket.”
With some tune-ups and adjustments along the way, their trusty steed proved to be a solid travel companion as they dodged the familiar obstacles found on Vietnam’s roads.
“It started with miles and miles of construction, Lines of semi-trucks spewing black tar smoke, scooters jetting from right to left, herds of water buffalo and cows, children playing in the street, tarps of drying corn and rice in the road, dogs, chickens, ducks… you name it & we probably dodged it…”, wrote Ozanich on Adventure of Two, a blog the couple created to document their trip with detailed posts and short videos of each stop along the way.
However, it was their final act that gained them a fair amount of international press. After arriving in Phnom Penh, instead of selling the bike, they opted to give it away to a young coconut vendor:
[A]fter a few days in Phnom Penh [Cambodia] and still a few hours before our much awaited bus ride to the next city we knew we needed to do something special with this bike. After riding around for a while we saw a teenage boy pushing a coconut cart and we just knew. As we rode past he stared at us as we stared back, his clothes were slightly torn and dirty, his cart wobbled as he pushed it along, and right then we knew he was the one who we would give the scooter to. We pulled up next to his cart and tried to explain to him that we wanted him to have this bike as a gift. I had used a translator before we left the hostel to convert a sentence into Cambodian.
“We rode this bike all the way from Vietnam, but now we are leaving for Siem Reap and would like to give it to you as a gift. Hopefully it helps you as much as it has helped us.”
He didn’t understand at first and with him being the kind kid he was he started trying to give us directions to Siem Reap. We took the keys out of the ignition and handed them to him. A look of complete surprise and happiness came over his face and we said “For you, a gift, no money.” …we walked away sipping our two coconuts with warmth in our hearts knowing how this bike could help this young boy in his life. As we walked away he stood behind us keys in hand waving with a smile so big it made every rough moment with this bike worth it."
Adventure of Two - The Motorbike (Vietnam to Cambodia) from Dylan Ozanich on Vimeo.
Though many others have done similar deeds, seeing this kind of thing never gets old.
