Somewhere in Hanoi you will take a wrong turn and end up in a lane too narrow to ride through and too narrow to turn around in. U-turns and tight turns are low-speed skills, and like all low-speed skills they get better fast with ten minutes of practice.
The core idea: look where you want to go
At walking pace a motorbike goes where your eyes go. The single most common cause of dropped bikes is looking down at the front wheel instead of through the turn. Turn your head fully toward the exit, let your arms stay loose, and the bike will follow.
Making a U-turn on a normal road
Pick your moment when traffic allows — a gap or a red-light queue behind you. Start from the far edge of your lane, look across the road to where you want to end up, keep a steady small throttle and slip the clutch on a manual bike. Feather the rear brake slightly to steady the speed. A wide, smooth arc beats a rushed tight one every time.
Turning around in a narrow lane
When the street is too tight for one arc, use the sides of it: turn until you are nearly stopped, plant a foot, walk the back wheel around by pushing off the ground, then ride out. Nobody in Hanoi will judge you — delivery riders do this exact shuffle every hour.
Tight turns at junctions
Slow down before the turn, not during it. Brake with the bike upright, then release the brakes as you lean in and add a touch of throttle to settle the suspension. For slow-speed control practice and cornering technique, see slow-speed-control-motorbike-vietnam and cornering-motorbike-vietnam.
Before you need the skill
Test how your bike behaves at low speed before a busy day does it for you: a rental motorbike with a worn clutch or heavy steering turns a routine U-turn into a wobble. Run the rental-motorbike-inspection-checklist at pickup and include one slow figure-eight in a quiet spot.