"On the obstacle course at the seventh annual Minsk Olympics here in northern Vietnam, Richard Rastall twisted the throttle on his Soviet-era Minsk motorcycle and gingerly accelerated up a four-foot grass embankment. The bike lurched. Its speedometer fell off.

“It goes with the territory, I suppose,” said Mr. Rastall, a 30-year-old Englishman who lives in Hanoi, fishing in his pockets for duct tape. “But you’ve got to love these bikes, really.”

By James Hookway