VIETNAM • TRAVEL

Education • Info

Total km biked: 740 kilometers

Days biked: 9 days

Overall the road conditions in Vietnam are hectic - a lot of traffic (cars, busses and motorbikes) and TONS of horning. Really, the horning was worse than in India in our opinion - and the horns don't play the nice music like they do in India either. As a general rule, we think we are pretty tolerant of traffic and don't mind riding in hectic conditions (we rode quite a bit in India - in and out of big cities like Mumbai and Delhi) but the combination of horning and exhaust in Vietnam wasn't very enjoyable for us after a while. You can be the only other thing on a two lane road and an approaching bus will usually still horn 3 or 4 times just as it passes you for no apparent reason. We also saw quite a few accidents in Vietnam, involving motorcycles, cars, busses and bicycles.

In general Vietnam was hot and dry in March. We did have a few days of sprinkles in the Mekong Delta area, but nothing significant.

Food and water is easy to find in Vietnam and water/drinks are cheaper than in Thailand. You can get a fresh pressed sugar cane juice for about 10-15 cents. We also drank quite a few smoothies in Vietnam called "Sinh To" which are also very popular with Vietnamese people. As far as food goes, we ate a lot of "pho" which is noodle soup and rice with pork or chicken. We thought the food was great!

We camped in some villages in the more remote mountainous areas of the country near Dalat, but most of the time we stayed in hotels/guesthouses in Vietnam. You could easily find a double room for about US$8 and usually the hotels had free wifi as well.

We used the same general southeast Asia map we used in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, but we would definitely recommend getting a more detailed map (as detailed as you can find) for Vietnam. The traffic is really heavy and it will be much more relaxing to cycle on less hectic roads. We don't know if it was just us, but we also found that it was very difficult to get directions from Vietnamese people in general. There always seemed to be confusion about which way to go and the distance to that place. Many times we would point in one direction and point to a town on the map and they would say "yes" then we would point in the exact opposite direction and ask for the same town and they would also say "yes".

Even though we had a very bad map of the area, we tried to ride on smaller roads regardless and ended up lost quite a few times. One afternoon we cycled for 30 kilometers in the Mekong Delta and ended up exactly in the same place we started 3 hours earlier (after two ferry rides and long winding dirt tracks through the rice fields)- and we are not exaggerating. We also ended up riding on a single track dirt path through the mountains near Dalat - which was incredible, but not what we were expecting, as everyone told us the road was paved and easy to follow, albeit small and rural.

We took a couple buses in Vietnam - one out of Saigon to Bau Loc and another back to Saigon when we decided that we needed to head back to Bangkok to get our winter stuff to head into Yunnan, China and Mongolia from Laos. The busses are pretty straight forward and they will usually take bikes (but always for a price). In our experience, the price for the bikes didn't always vary equally with the price of the ticket. It cost about the same to take the bikes to Bau Loc from Saigon as it did to take them back to Saigon from much further north (just south of KonTum - about double the time on a bus).

We also took some ferries in the Mekong Delta area. Many times, ferries are the only reasonable way to cross a river, as bridges can be few and far between. They are always cheap and you can always take your bike.

The area around Dalat was beautiful, especially on the smaller roads in the mountains. We also found some small roads and ferry rides in the Mekong Delta area, which were incredible. It is worth the effort to find these roads with minimal traffic and great scenery and people.

Internet is incredibly cheap in Vietnam - about 4,000 dong/hour (less than 25 cents) and wireless is readily available in many hotels. Although the internet is plentiful, it isn't always fast. We carry a laptop with us when we travel for work purposes, so wifi is always a selling point for us. We usually had really poor skype connections using our laptop nearly everywhere in Vietnam (even Saigon).

We found a great bike shop in Saigon, run by Tri and his mechanic. It is at 285 Vo Van Tan. It just looks like a residence from the outside, so you have to ring the bell. They replaced both our chains and cables, cleaned the bikes, filed our gears and replaced Keith's rear cassette for an amazing price. Tri didn't even charge us for Meredith's chain, since when we first came there he told us it didn't need replacing. He also always insisted on getting us coffee every time we came to see him. They were great! After we rode to the north and returned to Saigon, our deraillers needed some adjusting and they fixed them again for free.