Vespa 125 PX Italia-Vietnam

Writer and journalist Giorgio Bettinelli (1955-2008) became famous with the publication of In Vespa, his book recounting his trip on a Vespa, the first of many, from Rome to Saigon between July 1992 and March 1993. An accidental Vesparado, after that first trip Bettinelli never stopped: his travels took him all over the world, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from Australia to South Africa, from Chile to Tasmania, through North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. This Vespa was the scooter that took Bettinelli on his first long journey, leaving Rome in July 1992 and arriving in Saigon in March 1993 (24,000 km in seven months). “I would never have imagined, after completing those 24,000 kilometres, that my future held another 240,000 on the saddle of a scooter… And even if I had imagined it, at the time I wouldn’t have believed it.” (G. Bettinelli, In Vespa, ed. Feltrinelli, 1997)