Started the day riding from the hotel 30 kms to the Cambodian border. One of the prettiest rides to date with a levee road running along a canal with both side lined by humble stilt houses & alive with the every day activities of village life. The houses were ramshackle, made from anything available like rusty tin, plastic, canvas, tree branches but with an obvious pride, swept clean & decorated with colourful pot plants. Ironically many also had satellite dishes. The Border crossing was quite but still slow & bureaucratic, but not so for locals who seemed to be loaded up with produce or goods & continue straight past quarantine & immigration. Once through we picked up our new bikes & a new local crew for a short ride to lunch. After lunch we did another ... read more

What a fantastic start to the new tour. 4 riders with 5 support staff. Started the day with a 2 hour bus ride out of town followed by a leisurely 43 km ride along a series of winding levee footpaths that followed a tributary of the Mekong River with river village life on display & at work on vast fertile floodplains of tropical fruit ( Durian & Jac) and flowers. lunch was a simple Pho soup followed by a short bus ride to a nearby river dock for an hour long trip along a tributary up the Mekong River to an overnight island homestay within the Mekong Delta. Everything about the Mekong has a charming derelict appearance & true to form our boat was having engine problems requiring constant stops & eventually a stop for mechanical ... read more

Woke to a crisp temp with a cloudless clear blue sky, perfect for a riding city tour of Dalat, a beautiful town unlike any other in Vietnam due to its manmade lakes & gardens, palaces and colonial-era summer homes that have largely escaped the ravages of war. The riding part of the day was a 40 km morning ride and a 20 km afternoon ride. The whole day was easy riding and both sessions had a 10 km downhill decent. The morning decent was a good surface & able to reach speeds of 50 Kph while the second was in a remote coffee growing area with a narrow twisting road with rough & broken surface in part & interrupted by local cow & goat herds but good speeds were also made. Our accommodation for the night ... read more

Left Quy Nhon for a short bus ride out of town for 70 kms of riding till lunch. The weather was equally as bad or worse than yesterday but off we merrily went until we had to change to an inland diversion as the planned costal route was seriously flooded. After lunch we had a final 20 km sprint on a good road with a heavy across the shoulder tail wind & some really good times made. While it was as relief to get out of the rain once riding had finished we only had limited dry clothes to change into for the 3.5 hr drive to our two night stay in Nha Trang. The trip notes described the drive as cliff hugging views overlooking a deep blue sea but the bleak scene from the bus ... read more

Today was a 75 km ride with the first 50 km starting at the Hue beachfront with the cycle path initially following the coast before passing through mainly fishing villages. Mostly flat but with a few challenging sections for loose sand & running water across the path following the recent typhoon and continual rain which somehow we have incredibly managed to avoid. The next 10 kms was up the Hai Van (Ocean Cloud) Pass on National Route 1A but now less traffic due to a new bypass tunnel. Misty clouds swirled around with rain threatening but still spectacular views along the way and at the top across the Bay of Denang made the effort of the 8% assent rewarding followed by an exhilarating 10 km decent to the tropical south and our two night stay at ... read more