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About us

ABOUT US
Motor Trails is powered by Dragon Trails, headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam. Our team of travel experts is based here to assist you in planning your motorbike adventures.

With a few exceptions all our trips are accompanied by one of our experienced international tour leaders. All our international tour leaders speak English (and German too). Most likely you’ll have one of the following tour leaders on your trip.
 

MARCO BRAND - FOUNDER
In 1991 Marco started to travel as a regular backpacker. He made a one-year journey through America, Australia and Southeast Asia. After returning to The Netherlands he started working as a tour guide for Koning Aap Travel, a Dutch adventure tour company. For eight years, he guided dozens of tours in many different countries on almost all continents. During his private time he traveled the entire Asian continent, but most of all Southeast Asia. Vietnam was the country he liked most. By motorbike he explored the remote mountain areas of northern Vietnam, where you still can find many different mountain tribes, still living according their traditional customs. He also learned to speak Vietnamese.

To share his enthusiasm and knowledge of the area, he organized in the year 2000 his first Motor Trails motorbike tour through this beautiful area of North Vietnam. During the first years of Motor Trails Marco guided most of the tours himself. As the number of destinations and tours increased Marco shifted his focus more towards organization and development. But he still likes to guide several trips a year.


DRAGON TRAILS SHARED SERVICES

Your motorbike tours are handled by Dragon Trails’ team in Vietnam under the shared services.

OANH VU – OPERATION MANAGER
Oanh is the backbone of Dragon Trails. She is an enthusiastic and hard worker who’s willing to go out of her way to make sure every motorbike trip is smooth sailing and all customers are taken care of. She loves exploring new places and often goes on adventures on the weekend with her family, hence, she is very knowledgeable about traveling around
THAO NGUYEN – RESERVATION AGENT
Thao has a passion for traveling and coffee. She has explored places in Vietnam on a motorbike and fell in love with it. You can ask her any questions about the tours and she will happily assist.
THAO LUU – MARKETING EXECUTIVE
Thao loves to work behind the scenes, she's in charge of making content for social media channels, designing flyers, and managing the website. She strives to create interesting content and share sneak peeks of exciting things that happened during the tours. She has a lot of travel places to cross on her list but she’s determined to explore them all, one trip at a time.


MEET (SOME OF) OUR TOUR LEADERS  

TIZIANA WARMERDAM
In 2001, Tiziana left the Netherlands for a long journey through Southeast Asia. At the end of this journey, she purchased a classic Royal Enfield motorbike in Nepal and drove back home via Northern India, Pakistan, and Iran. She fell in love with the Indian Himalayas and often returned there riding a Royal Enfield through this majestic landscape.

Back in The Netherlands she gave up her regular job, traveled around the world, and worked for various international travel agencies. In recent years, she has guided many motorcycle tours in India and Nepal. Since 2008 she has worked part-time for Motor Trails for which she guided different motorcycle tours in Asia and South America.
HOA TRAN
Hoa is our local tour leader and mechanic in Vietnam. With 20 years of experience in motorbike adventurer tours, he knows less-traveled places in Vietnam better than anyone. He is also known as our best mechanic in Vietnam, he ensures that your motorbike is meticulously cared for and maintained to guarantee an uninterrupted riding experience. When you choose a motorbike tour in Vietnam with us, you will likely have him on the team. He enjoys sharing his rich knowledge about local people, and culture here over some rice wine during dinner time.
LARS CALDENHOVEN
Interested in Indian history and culture, Lars made long journeys through the western US and Central America. He travelled for another year in South America and ended up in Peru where he fell in love with this country. He learned Spanish and married a Peruvian. Living in Peru he guides many trips for several Dutch travel agencies from his new home.

Due to his extensive knowledge of the country, the language and the routes, he is the ideal guide to our motorbike tours through South America. Lars has bought his own motorbikes which are used for our South American tours. For Motor Trails he guides our tours in Peru, Bolivia and lately also our impressive tour through Patagonia.

REMCO VAN STAPPERSHOEF
Remco studied business economics at the University of Amsterdam and worked for several years in business. When he worked as a management consultant in Uganda in 2002 and 2003, he became addicted to riding a motorbike in this beautiful country and surrounding countries. During that time, he spends about 20,000 km on a 125cc Suzuki through East Africa. Since then, he has combined his permanent work with travel and travel.    

For the Dutch travel agency Sawadee, he worked as a tour guide in Africa, but also in the Middle East and Asia. In 2009 he traveled through Latin America for six months on a Honda 650XR, after which he started working as a tour guide for Motor Trails.
MICK SONNENFELD
Now that the children and his Italian restaurant can more or less stand on their own two feet, Mick can now fully focus on his other passions: in addition to good food, these are traveling and motorcycling. Throughout his life, this was mainly limited to holidays in which he saw all corners of the world by motorcycle, car, or camper, but now there is also room beyond that. Because of his experience, Mick can be deployed anywhere but is currently mainly active in South-East Asia.
BART SCHUILING
After Bart graduated in Wageningen, The Netherlands, in the field of Tropical Plant Breeding, he left for Indonesia in 1980, where he worked for several years as a relief worker in Aceh Tengah, a remote mountain area in Northern Sumatra. Riding a motorbike, many times off-road, was a necessity in order to explore the area. After Indonesia, during his 2-year stay in Australia, he traveled across the country on a Honda CB250 for 7 months, covering more than 25,000 km. After Australia, he also explored New Zealand on a motorbike for three months.

Back in the Netherlands, he started working for Baobab Travel. For sixteen years he worked as a tour guide in many different countries. He also organized new tours in South East Asia and in South America. Bart started working for Motor Trails in 2005, first as a tour guide, but nowadays also as part-time tour operator at the office. Bart speaks fluent Spanish and Indonesian.
GUILLAUME ADELINE
Guillaume has passionately guided motorcycle rides on the tracks of West Africa for almost 20 years, from Dakar to the Ténéré desert, from Timbuktu to Lomé...etc. Always on the lookout for new trails or “secret” passages, his experience in the field is a serious guarantee for the success of your ride and he will guide you in good humor, respect, and safety.

ROBBERT VAN BUSSEL
In 2010, Robbert made his first long-distance trip abroad to Vietnam and he was immediately sold. The love for traveling and the enthusiasm to discover countries and cultures was born. This resulted, among other things, in his choice to study International Management and internships abroad in Hong Kong and Ethiopia. After briefly working in international sales, he quickly concluded that he wanted to take a different path.

During a trip through Uganda and Rwanda with Motor Trails, his passions for traveling and motorcycling and the pleasure of interacting with groups came together. Today he takes people on adventures by motorcycle and guides them through beautiful areas abroad. Robbert is our youngest supervisor.

JOSEPH MADANJI
Joseph began his career at Motor Trails as a mechanic, boasting a diploma in Mechanical Engineering. His journey commenced when he purchased his first bike, a Kibo 150cc off-road version, igniting his passion for off-road exploration throughout Kenya. This newfound love for biking led him to his current role as our local Kenyan tour leader for motorbike adventures in Kenya and Kenya -Tanzania. He is excited to be part of the team, eager to contribute his expertise as both a mechanic and tour guide to create an unforgettable motorbike adventure.

KO DUIJVESTEIN
In the Netherlands, Ko rides a big Moto Guzzi. However, when he first arrived in Kenya in 2011, he started riding off-road, for which he used, for the first time, a small and light motorcycle. He fell in love with this continent and continued exploring the continent, always using a small motorbike for easy off-road riding. Ko traveled from Kenya to Cape Town in 2017 on a 200 cc. But before that, he already made countless smaller trips through East Africa.

Every year he goes to the African continent for 3 months to further explore this continent, and to guide our motorbike tours. Ko knows a lot about cartography and computers but is now also very skilled in motorcycle maintenance.

ROLAND SPRUIJTENBURG

After travelling to Indonesia several times Roland fell in love with this country. In 2007 he moved to Indonesia to live there permanently. After exploring various islands by motorbike, such as Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa and Flores, he decided to make a living out of his passion by organizing motorbike tours through various parts of Indonesia. Since 2011 Roland has been developing and guiding new motorcycle tours not only in Indonesia but also in Thailand and the Philippines.

From 2017 he works as a tour guide for Motor Trails in Indonesia and the Philippines. Roland speaks fluent Indonesian.

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