Potholes are a constant of Vietnamese roads — less in central Hanoi, more at the edges, on older bridges’ ramps and on rural routes. A pothole at speed can bend a rim, pinch a tube flat, or throw you off line into traffic. Riding them is a reading skill more than a bike skill.
Reading the road ahead
Scan the surface three to five seconds ahead, not one. Potholes announce themselves in context: standing water at the road edge, patched tar snakes, a shadow line across your lane, or the bikes ahead of you all making the same small swerve — the swerve pattern of traffic ahead is your best pothole radar.
Crossing one you cannot avoid
If the hole arrives with no room to steer around it: straighten the bike, get off the throttle, rise slightly off the seat with bent knees, and roll through — do not brake hard over the hole, which loads the front wheel exactly when the impact comes. Wheels hitting edge-on are the worst case; a shallow angle across a wide hole is often better than a square hit.
The hidden ones
Night and rain hide potholes — night-riding-motorbike-safety-vietnam and flooded-streets-riding-motorbike-vietnam cover those conditions. Riding in the wheel tracks of cars is a decent default: cars have already found the surface that survives.
What potholes do to a bike
Rims crack, steering head bearings take a beating, and forks slowly lose their damping. After a heavy hit, if the bike tracks strangely or the bars feel vague, stop and look — rental-motorbike-feels-wrong covers what to do next on a rental, and tyre-care-motorbike-vietnam covers checking the tyre for sidewall damage.
The one-line version
Scan far ahead, read the swerve patterns of traffic, and when a hole is unavoidable: straight, loose, roll through — never brake hard into it.