Claire Laurent

Claire graduated from the École de Journalisme de Sciences Po Paris with a master's in journalism in 2015, with a one-year exchange at Vietnam National University Hanoi focused on Southeast Asian Studies. She joined the VnExpress International features desk that same year as a junior reporter on the urban-transport beat, covering the Hanoi Metro Line 2A opening, the 2018 inner-Hanoi motorbike-ban debate, and the 2017 helmet-law revision. From 2018 to 2020 she ran the paper's weekly 'Two Wheels Hanoi' column, one of the most syndicated transport columns in the Vietnamese English-language press. She left the staff in 2021 to freelance and has since contributed regularly to Saigoneer, Vietnam News, the Bangkok Post (after relocating to Thailand in 2023), and the Asian Mobility Forum's annual report.

Her reporting focuses on the intersection of policy and practical mobility - the questions a tourist or expat actually asks. Her 2019 investigative series on tourist scooter rental safety, published in three parts in the VnExpress International Sunday edition, was shortlisted for the SOPA (Society of Publishers in Asia) Excellence in Reporting on the Environment award and led to a Vietnam National Administration of Tourism revision of the Hanoi rental-shop registration scheme. A 2022 follow-up on IDP enforcement at provincial checkpoints in Vietnam and Thailand was cited in regional parliamentary debate on the visitor-licensing framework. She has spoken at TEDxHanoi on city mobility (2021), been a panellist at the Global Mobility Forum Bangkok, and is a regular contributor to the Asian Motorcycle Journalists Network annual conference.

Personally she has commuted Hanoi by Honda PCX 160 since 2018 - 60,000+ km logged daily on the Old Quarter circuit, the West Lake ring, and the Pham Van Dong axis - and has continued daily commuting in Bangkok on the same model after her 2023 move. For features she has ridden the Ha Giang Loop solo (a 2020 Saigoneer cover story), completed a 2,200 km Hanoi-to-Saigon overland by scooter on the Ho Chi Minh Highway for a 2022 longform, and rides every other Saturday with the Bangkok Women's Motorcycle Club's weekend loop. That practice - testing every claim against a real commute - is the editorial standard she brings to Thai Bike: never write what you have not ridden.