Last summer, my long term partner and I split up and she bought me out of our co-owned home. I was planning on buying my own place, but when the money landed in my account I realised I might never again have the money, freedom and health to fulfil one of my lifelong ambitions. So, about a month ago, I got on a plane to Vietnam. I’m going to spend the next few years cycling back to the UK.
I landed in Hanoi and, after a couple of weeks adapting to the climate, bought a bike and hired a driver to take me and my gear up to the northernmost point of the country in Lũng Cú. Considering I had zero experience riding through mountainous regions, let alone on a fully loaded touring bike, this first leg has been something of a baptism by fire.
My route took me clockwise around half of the Hà Giang Loop, taking in Đồng Văn, the Mã Pí Lèng Pass, Mèo Vạc and Tu Sản Canyon. The terrain was unrelenting. Long uphill slogs on 10%+ gradients followed by steep, white-knuckle descents. It’s hard to do justice to how stunning the karst landscape is in this part of the country. Whenever I stopped for a breather and watched the easy riders glide past on their mopeds, I couldn’t help feeling like I was really earning the views.
After the Hà Giang Loop I started on the road back to Hanoi, cutting past Ba Bể Lake on the way. I stopped at a beautiful homestay and refuelled on the best home cooked Vietnamese food I’ve had so far. Abundant and varied, exactly what I needed after a few days surviving off tạp hóa junk food in the jungle with limited options. I also found a huge cave hidden down an overgrown path just outside of Pác Ngòi on my rest day.
I started to feel time ticking on my 90-day visa after I set out from Ba Bể, so I decided to try to make the final ~200 km back to Hanoi in two days. I’d only been averaging around 50 km up to that point, but with the terrain flattening out I thought I could handle it. What I lost in climbs, however, I gained in heat and humidity. To try to beat it, I set out at 4–5am.
As I descended out of Ba Bể, the karst gave way to endless rice paddies, which in turn slowly gave way to increasingly dense urban sprawl. On my final day back to Hanoi, Komoot sent me on two wild goose chases, turning a 120 km ride that should have ended around 11am into a 150 km ride that still had 20 km left when the midday sun hit in full force. As I started to feel my soul leaving my body, the shade of a motorway overpass came into view, and I took it as a sign to stop for a few hours rather than risk the final stretch into the city in 35°C heat at 90% humidity with no shade.
After spending around five hours under the bridge with the local taxi drivers in their hammocks, I made the final push, crossing over the Soviet/Chinese-built Thăng Long bridge on the lower deck reserved for mopeds. I descended into Hanoi at peak rush hour, an experience I’d been dreading after struggling with the traffic as a pedestrian. But being so set on getting back to the comfort of AC and a shower at my apartment, the apprehension faded. I gave way to the chaos and became part of the living organism that is Vietnamese traffic and made it home around 5pm.
This first leg of the journey has been the hardest and most rewarding physical thing I’ve ever done. Almost 6000m of ascent over 500km with ~20kg of cargo. Starting in the far north, I frontloaded the toughest part of Vietnam, so hopefully I can relax a bit more going forward and have the energy to take in the country properly. Everyone I met along the way was incredibly kind and generous, and I felt welcome everywhere I stopped.
I’ll be heading south over the next couple of months before crossing into Cambodia and then onto Laos. I’ll probably check back in when I make it to Huế.
by Early_Moment_3428