Vo Huyen Thien Thu (R) with her sister in Ninh Binh Province, not far from Hanoi, during their recent north-south trip in a photo from her Facebook page.
Local travelers said covering 1,150 miles in such a short time is either impossible or dangerous.
When two young women from Ho Chi Minh City announced that they had completed a south-north road trip in 40 hours, they did not receive the plaudits they expected.
Many people said they had either lied or put themselves in a very dangerous situation.
Vo Huyen Thien Thu, a HCMC college student, said she and her younger sister set out on a motorbike on January 31 and arrived in Hanoi two days later. They had planned to finish the 1,850-kilometer (1,150 miles) in 36 hours, but thunderstorms stretched the journey out by four extra hours.
Thu said they only stopped to rest, eat and sleep. They used toilets at gas stations and put on extra plastic raincoats on cold days.
From Hanoi, they spent a week traveling back south, stopping en route in Bac Ninh, Ninh Binh, Nghe An, Da Nang, Hoi An, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen.
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Vo Huyen Thien Thu poses in Phu Yen Province in central Vietnam during her journey, as shown in a photo on her Facebook page. |
When their story was shared on local travel forums, many people said they were not convinced.
Several travelers said Thu’s story totally made sense, as they had done a similar journey in 29 hours.
But others did not think so.
A male traveler named Thanh Duy said the women must have had to drive more than 900 kilometers a day. “I could only do 600 kilometers on my best day,” he said.
One said completing more than a thousand miles in 40 hours is possible, but “you wouldn’t have the energy to travel the whole week after that.”
Many commented that it was dangerous trying to do a long trip in such a short space of time, and that they would not have been able to enjoy the scenery.
Thu said her focus on the trip, which cost them around VND8 million ($350), was to test her spirit and strength.
She had already completed the same journey in 48 hours.
“I will make a third trip because each time brings different joy and experience,” Thu said.
This is not the first time a Vietnamese journey story has triggered debate among fellow travelers.
In 2014, a 30-year-old Hanoian man also became a topic of discussion after he spent 10 days driving his motorbike more than 4,400 kilometers to reach all four tips in the north, south, east and west of Vietnam.
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