Last updated May 2026 | Words, photos and film by Vietnam Coracle | Read time 15 minutes | 65 comments

Tom Divers is the founder and creator of Vietnam Coracle. In 2005 he moved from his native London to Vietnam, where he has been living, working and travelling ever since. He pays rent in Ho Chi Minh City but is more often on the road, riding his motorbike a quarter of a million kilometres across Vietnam to research guides to the farthest-flung corners of the nation. When he’s not in the saddle, you’ll find him on a beach with a margarita, in a tent on a mountainside or at a streetside noodle house: in other words, at the ‘office’. Read more about Tom: Q&A, About Page, Vietnam Tourism website.

My Motorbike Stavros Retires in its 20^th Year after 273,000km on the Road

In our 20^th year on the road together, the odometer on my motorbike – known affectionately to me as ‘Stavros’ – ticked over to 273,000km. Between 2007 and 2026, Stavros – a Yamaha Nouvo 115cc automatic scooter – has ridden all over Vietnam, visiting every province and municipality in the nation. All of the guides on this website have been produced on the back of Stavros’ efforts to get me there and take me back again. As far as I can recall, in all of our road trips together we’ve never had to turn back. Stavros’ longevity has nothing to do with my mechanical prowess nor my maintenance and care: I am mechanically inept and I have not been particularly kind to Stavros. I have asked Stavros to do far more than it was designed to handle and without the upkeep and attention that it presumably needs. I can only assume, therefore, that Stavros was built well and has a stout heart, because it has stoically soaked up and withstood everything I’ve thrown at it for nearly 20 years and more than a quarter of a million kilometres on the road. Stavros is not dead – it is still in decent working order, capable of riding long distances both on- and off-road. Stavros is simply retiring with dignity after a long, eventful and adventurous life. A constant feature in my life for the best part of two decades, over the years Stavros has explored every corner of the country I love and transported the people I love – my family, friends, girlfriends. Stavros is a link to my past and will always live in my memory. Goodbye, Stavros!

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The Life of Stavros:

🎬 3-minute film tribute to my motorbike, Stavros (watch in 4K quality for best viewing)

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🗺️ Life Map: 

This is a map of every single guide, article and review (over 400 of them) that I’ve published on this website since it began in 2012. Stavros has taken me to all of the locations on this map, even including the islands. To use this map: click on the map > zoom in > click an icon > follow the link for details👇

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🎂 Birth: 

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I bought Stavros brand new in Saigon’s Chinatown (Chợ Lớn) in March 2007 – when I was 23 years-old – for 30,000,000vnđ. Back then, that was equivalent to $2,000, making it the single most expensive item I’d ever purchased. At that time, my Vietnamese bank only allowed customers to withdraw 2,000,000vnđ per time from their cash machines, and the highest denomination note was 100,000vnđ. This meant I had to insert my bank card 15 times to reach the total cost of my motorbike, and, by the time I’d finished – after exhausting the supply of two ATMs – I had 300 bank notes stuffed into my pockets. It was a nervous walk from the cash machine to the motorbike dealership. Bought new, the motorbike had a warrantee for 2 years or 50,000km. Today, it has been on the road for 19 years and over 273,000km.

Stavros is a gold-painted, 115cc, 2007 edition Yamaha Nouvo. Back then, when it was a shiny and new motorbike, this was a relatively coveted model in Vietnam. I called it ‘Stavros’ as a kind of joke, because the motorbike had a masculine, macho arrogance about it: I imagined Stavros as a sort of cartoon-like caricature of a self-confident (perhaps self-deluded), tanned Mediterranean male, who thought of himself as a bit of a ladies’ man, and wore his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a hairy chest and a gold medallion. After a while, the name just caught on as I and the people around me bought into the idea of naming the motorbike ‘Stavros’.

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😎 Youth & Adolescence: 

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I still remember my first road trips with Stavros. Initially, I enjoyed riding around Saigon late at night when the roads are quiet, with my girlfriend at the time on the back or with one of my friends riding pillion for company. But my first ride outside the city limits was to Tây Ninh, a province northwest of Saigon, near the Cambodian border. It’s only a hundred kilometres and not a remarkable ride, but it is a drive featured in a tense scene from Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and also passes through the village of Trảng Bàng, where the famous photograph of Kim Phúc (sometimes referred to as ‘Napalm Girl’) was taken in June 1972, whose story is told in The Girl in the Picture by Denise Chong. I remember how green the rice paddies were that reached to the sides of the highway and all the way to the flat horizon. And I remember the rains that fell with dusk on the unlit highway during the return journey. Even on a short ride like this, the sense of independence and adventure were intoxicating. My next road trips took me progressively further afield: out to Vũng Tàu, along the coast road to Hồ Tràm, La Gi then Phan Thiết and up the mountain passes to Đà Lạt and the Central Highlands. These were the first of many hundreds of road trips that Stavros and I would undertake together. It’s difficult to imagine now, but back then navigation on road trips like this was a matter of cross-referencing several outdated paper maps and asking locals for more up-to-date information.

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Motorbike road trips can be exhilarating, especially when the bike and the country are new to you. Inevitably, this excitement can lead to rushes of blood to the head resulting in some unwise riding decisions. During Stavros’ adolescent years, there were a couple of minor collisions, all of which were entirely my own fault and usually in the middle of nowhere on empty, open roads. One of the earliest I can recall was on the mountain passes between Đà Lạt and Lake Lắk on Highway 27. There was no traffic on that road back then and the riding was superb: sweeping from bend to bend, ascending and descending mountains and valleys in the cool, crisp, impossibly clear highlands light, smelling the coffee blossom, the red earth, the wood smoke and the pine trees. Mesmerized by the scenery and the sensation, I rode too fast into a hairpin bend. Just as I was about to turn my wheel I noticed the corner had a layer of gravel over it. In that long split second that occurs when you realize you’re going to have an accident, I understood that I needed to brake and turn in order to negotiate the hairpin and not ride off the side on the road and fall into the valley, but I also recognized that if I did brake and turn my wheel in the gravel I would skid and slide dangerously on the road. Either way, I would have an accident. I went into the bend, turned and braked as gently as I could. The bike slipped, lost grip, skidded, overbalanced and fell on top of me, continuing to move along the gravelly asphalt with me beneath it for several meters before coming to a complete stop. I was OK – a bloody knee, elbows and hands, ripped jeans and a bit shaken – and Stavros was scratched but unphased. I learned my lesson, and there were several more to learn after that too.

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💪 In its Prime: 

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Stavros’ prime was probably between 2009 – when I first rode from Saigon to Hanoi and into the northern mountains – and 2019 on the eve of the Covid 19 pandemic, when things started to slow down and Stavros began to show signs of wear and tear. This decade was when Stavros was most active, adventurous, robust, challenged almost daily and on an unforgiving schedule of road trips across the length and breadth of Vietnam many times over.

Stavros’ life has not been easy, but it has been adventurous, hard-working and exciting. Over almost two decades on Vietnam’s roads, Stavros has endured the traffic-clogged, exhaust-choked streets of Saigon’s rush hour on thousands of occasions; stood up to the driving rain, gale-force winds and biblical lightning of monsoon season typhoons on the central coast; survived the mud-filled mountain roads and landslides of the extreme northern highlands; suffered the potholes and red dirt roads of my many ill-conceived ‘short-cuts’ in the Central Highlands; and withstood the oppressive heat and humidity of the Mekong Delta baking in the late dry season sun. Stavros has crossed the country on its our two wheels more times than I care to remember. But Stavros has also travelled the nation many dozens of times on trains and buses, and crossed the seas, rivers and lakes of Vietnam on boats, ferries and wooden rafts. Stavros has been camping in cold pine forests and on empty beaches and by mountain rivers. And Stavros has even met with one or two minor collisions. There have been some breakdowns, but never any meltdowns: I’ve never lost my temper with Stavros, and in turn, Stavros has never let me down.

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As a part of my life for nearly twenty years, Stavros has made acquaintance with, and even transported, most of the people I know or have known. My family and friends visiting from the UK, my international friends (who come and go, as is the nature of foreign residents in Vietnam) and my Vietnamese friends (who also come and go, as many leave to study or work or live abroad), and my romantic partners (who come and go). Stavros, however, has been a constant in my life since 2007.

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🔩 Surgery & Maintenance: 

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When I bought Stavros in 2007, I knew nothing about motorbikes. Indeed, I still don’t. Nor did I know anything about motorbike maintenance – I still don’t. My choice of bike was not based on any mechanical knowledge: I didn’t pore over reviews, I didn’t check the bike’s specs, I didn’t ask friends and I didn’t search online for any information. I just liked the look, shape and colour of Stavros. Although it may seem hard to believe today, Stavros was quite a desirable motorbike back in 2007.

Having no mechanical knowledge, I can’t claim to have played much of a role in nursing Stavros to over a quarter of a million kilometres. Instead, I have paid for Stavros to be maintained as regularly as possible at Yamaha garages throughout Vietnam or at local mechanics. However, I have always treated Stavros with a certain level of care and respect. My motorbike is probably the most essential piece of equipment I own: it is a significant tool in my profession (researching and producing travel guides), it enables many of my everyday activities and, to some extent, my life is in its hands on a daily basis. On the other hand, I have also been rough and demanding with Stavros. There have been many occasions when I’ve travelled over 500km in a single day (a lot on Vietnam’s roads), or ridden in deep mud or up steep goat paths or on rough roads made entirely of big, sharp boulders – none of which are conditions that Stavros was designed for. And yet, everything I’ve asked of it, Stavros has done. In almost 20 years, Stavros has never really let me down and, as far as I can recall, I’ve never had to turn back.

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Knowing nothing about motorbike maintenance, when something goes wrong with Stavros, I am at the mercy of the nearest mechanic or Yamaha garage. The default method for Yamaha mechanics is to identify the problem and then simply change the old part for a new one, rather than fix the original. Therefore, as some people have smugly asked, after nearly two decades of Yamaha mechanics replacing old parts for new ones, “How many bikes has my bike been?” But this obviously misses the point. If someone you love has a hip replacement or a prosthetic limb, they would still be the same person, because it is something else that makes someone who they are. So it is with Stavros. At some point, all motorbike owners end up buying new parts rather than mending old ones. I know Stavros today is still the same Stavros I bought in 2007.

Most mechanical issues have been pretty routine. The biggest surgery Stavros ever underwent was probably about a decade ago after I’d ridden 530km in one day along the Ho Chi Minh Road on the hottest day ever recorded in Vietnam at that time. Stavros overheated, smoke starting pouring out of the exhaust, and I hobbled into Thanh Hóa city to find a Yamaha garage, where the mechanic took 2 days to fix everything. I can’t pretend I understood what the problem was or how it was fixed, but it obviously worked because Stavros continued to ride all over Vietnam for another 10 years. Of all the minor breakdowns, the most bizarre was many years ago when riding on the Western Ho Chi Minh Road, a beautiful, deserted section of single-track asphalt along the Viet-Lao border. I got a puncture in the middle of nowhere and slowly nursed Stavros to the nearest settlement, the riverside hamlet of Long Sơn. There, the local mechanic discovered the cause of the puncture was a bamboo toothpick! It must have hit the tyre at the perfect angle otherwise it would have snapped under the considerable weight of the motorbike.

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♿ Old Age: 

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Stavros may have staved off old age longer than most, but for at least the last few years the signs, symptoms and effects of a long and arduous life have become apparent. Some of them are clearly visible on the outside, but others are less obvious, underlying problems. The plastic lamination, which I covered the entire body with when I bought the motorbike to protect it from scratches, is blistering and flaking off, making it look as though Stavros has a rare skin disease. Various pipes on the underbody have turned a rust-brown. The luggage rack that GIVI supplied is rusting out of existence after being exposed to the salty sea breezes of Phú Quốc Island for 12 months during the Covid lock-down. And the square, Transformer-esque body looks boxy and heavy compared to the sleek and slender designs that are available today.

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But I don’t care too much about any of these mostly aesthetic issues. In fact, the more worn, unfashionable and used Stavros looks, the more unyielding, rugged and tough it appears to me. I’m suspicious of bikers whose motorbikes are too ‘precious’, always looking pristine and virginal, as if they’re fresh off the showroom floor. Where’s the evidence of all the epic journeys it’s made, all the road it’s eaten, the weather it’s endured, the adventures it’s undertaken? In fact, despite its bedraggled appearance in later life, Stavros continues to ride long distances – both on- and off-road – and each and every road trip and adventure is worn into its scratched and scarred body. But nothing lasts forever.

Despite its remarkable achievements, I know that Stavros is old and tired and more prone to wear and tear than previously, and it costs me more and more money to maintain. In particular, Stavros has significantly lost power going uphill and especially struggles when loaded down with the extra weight of luggage or a passenger. The engine is noisy – almost embarrassingly so – and gets very hot after a couple of hours riding in the tropical sun, and I have to change the oils every few hundred kilometres. Ultimately, Stavros is becoming an inconvenience and a liability. I have to ride it at least once every 48 hours otherwise the risk of it not starting is high. At altitude, when riding in the highlands, Stavros struggles for air – coughing, spluttering and significantly down on power. Hill starts are slow and sluggish. During a solo camping trip last Christmas, when riding up a steep dirt road into the pine forests near Đà Lạt, the clutch assembly overheated and disintegrated into a million little pieces, leaving me stranded in the mountains.

Ultimately, I have known and accepted for a long time that Stavros needs to retire. However, my plans for a replacement motorbike became complicated and dragged on for many months. Not knowing when exactly I would get my new bike, I neglected the maintenance of my old one, reluctant to invest more time and money into Stavros. Hence the sorry state of Stavros towards the end: the bald tyres, broken wing mirror, rusted frame, exposed wiring, faulty brake light, rattling bodywork and filthy exterior.

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🎈 Retirement Party: 

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In its final months, weeks and days on the road, Stavros still performs well. It’s a great road cruiser – gliding along the straights, purring through the corners. At steady speeds it’s still smooth, reliable and fun to ride, with a range of around 120km-140km per tank, depending on the terrain. Stavros can still endure long, nationwide road trips through Vietnam, eating up 300km+ rides on a daily basis. It can even deal with dirt roads, rocky paths and highland tracks when scouting for good wild camping spots. In short, Stavros is not dead. It is still in decent, capable working order; still tough, still alive. Nevertheless, the time has come: on Monday, 13^th April, 2026, Stavros retired.

The evening before Stavros’ retirement, I invited my friends to join a ‘block party’ to celebrate its life. Under the trees in a riverside park near my apartment in Hồ Chí Minh City, a dozen of us gathered for snacks and drinks as the sun set. Everyone took turns riding Stavros around the block and we toasted its life and retirement. It was a fun and fitting evening, and I thank my friends for coming and for buying into the idea that this was an event worth having a party for.

I understand that Stavros may seem a bit of a joke to people who perhaps consider themselves real bikers. And that’s totally understandable. I’m not a bikey guy – I’m not into motorbikes, I don’t know about them. I like bikes – what they make possible, how they look, feel, the freedom and independence they give you and the joy of riding and exploring – but the bikes themselves aren’t a hobby of mine. On the other hand, motorbiking has, to some extent, become a big part of my life and work. But even in the context of this website, the motorbike is a means to an end: a mode of transportation, a way to see, experience, explore and discover more and more of Vietnam; to carry my friends, family, gear, camping equipment – all of that is more important to me than the actual motorbike. And yet, somehow Stavros has survived, thrived and lasted for the best part of two decades, all the while becoming a significant part of my life and my identity, not to mention a constant feature on this website. I am ever so grateful to Stavros: what it has done, what it has made possible, and where it has taken me.

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👼 Afterlife: 

❤️If you enjoy this website, please support Vietnam Coracle with a donation or sign up for my Patreon membership to help keep this site free & 100% independent. Thank you, Tom

Happily, this might not be the end for Stavros. There may well be an afterlife. While its riding and road trip days are over, there is a chance that Stavros will live on into the future, albeit in a more sedate, passive way. Plans are currently being made and I will write about Stavros’ afterlife if and when it becomes a reality. Meanwhile, I have already bought my new motorbike and am currently riding it around southern and central Vietnam. This too will be the topic of a future article.

Although of course I am sad to say goodbye, there’s also not much to be sad about. Stavros has undoubtably lived the fullest of lives and has done everything it could possibly have done. There are only good memories. And I’m very proud that, almost by accident, there is a digital record of Stavros’ life written, mapped, photographed and filmed across this website, not to mention imprinted in my memory and in the memories of all those that have known Stavros from 2007 to 2026. Goodbye, Stavros.❤️

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“Hello, if you enjoy my website, please support it.
Thank you.” Tom

Donate

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*Disclosure: I never receive payment for anything I write: my content is always free and independent. I’ve written this article because I want to: I love my old motorbike and I want my readers to know about it. For more details, see my Disclosure & Disclaimer statements and my About Page

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