I was once in a group of 8 falangs riding 115cc scooters (or “chicken chasers”!) with Thai plates, and we tried to get into VN from 3 international borders in Cambodia, and one in Laos. In the end, the result was negative (under 175=OK was just a rumour), but on that final crossing attempt, me and one other guy had already been stamped out of Laos, before our bikes caused us to be turned around. The exit stamps were neatly cancelled with some kind of “special stamp”, so we had no problems to get back to Laos. Can´t remember the name of the border, but it´s the one directly east from Savannakhet. We actually got very close to succeeding there (as well as the Bavet/Moc Bai crossing in Cambodia, on the main road to HCMC)... I think if we had been a smaller group, then we might have made it. It´s sorta hard to “fly under the radar” when there´s eight big, ugly hairy falangs riding scooters...!!

But that was over 6 years ago. And I cannot quarantee, how it would go, if you ended up in the same situation, I just mentioned about my own experience. If you can arrange a back-up visa then yes, it might be a good idea. For one thing, the language barrier was massive – unless you´ve learnt it, I can guarantee, that you won´t understand a word of Vietnamese.. and you´ll be lucky, if the border officials speak three words of English (though there was one exception, on our total of five times trying at the borders!) So if you do get stuck in no-mans land, yeah it could be a tough situation to resolve, and you could run out of money before bribing your way out. Cambodian & Lao officials seemed to appreciate some “tea money”, but I would not want to try the Vietnamese, they appeared generally quite humourless.

I think there may be some sort of easing or change in their vehicle regulations lately, but exact info in English might be very hard to get. Also how legally your bike would be in the country, is a whole other thing. If you have an accident while in VN, then you could be in deep trouble. But if I had my bike there right now, I think I would give it a go. (Sorta cheap bike though, so it would not hurt me bad, if it got confiscated!)