Vietnamese pharmacies are everywhere, and that is genuinely reassuring — but the first minutes after a fall happen before you reach a pharmacy. A small kit under the seat turns a bad moment into a manageable one.
The under-seat kit
Sterile gauze and a couple of bandages, plasters in several sizes, antiseptic wipes, a small tube of antiseptic cream, tweezers (gravel in palms), a blister pack of paracetamol or ibuprofen, and a small foil emergency blanket for shock or winter. Add nitrile gloves if you have room — for helping strangers, which is half the point of carrying the kit. It all fits in a zip bag the size of a paperback, and the weight is nothing.
The injuries that actually happen
Low-speed city falls grind palms, elbows, knees and ankles — road rash and gravel in skin. The treatment sequence: clean it out properly (the part everyone skips), dress it, keep it dressed. Untreated road rash in Hanoi’s humidity infects within days. Ankles and feet are the classic sneaker-injury; what-to-wear-riding-motorbike-vietnam covers preventing them rather than dressing them.
When it is more than a kit problem
Any head impact, any suspected fracture, any loss of consciousness, or any bleed that does not stop with direct pressure: call emergency services and go to a hospital. The scene-response sequence — including the legal duties at an accident — is covered in motorbike-accident-first-aid-vietnam and motorbike-accident-duties-vietnam.
Kit maintenance
Humidity kills kits: check yours every couple of months for damp, expired medication and hardened gauze. Replace the paracetamol when you replace the rain jacket — both expire into uselessness quietly.
The one-line version
Gauze, plasters, antiseptic, tweezers, painkillers, gloves — a paperback-sized bag under the seat, checked twice a year; it converts the most common falls from a scene into a story.