I travelled from Canada to Vietnam for a self-guided cycle tour with the Grasshopper Tour Company just after the Vietnam New Year in February 2025. The company had arranged the hotels, routes and luggage transfers, so I just had to cycle, sightsee and, perhaps add a couple of my own deviations to the routes provided. The tour was based on the central coast, so having arrived in Hanoi, I first had to fly south to the ancient capital of Hue.
Expecting to be jetlagged, I gave myself and extra day in Hue before the start of the tour and took advantage of this to explore the Hue Citadel on foot. As it turned out, flying westward from Canada I was in a state of perpetual night until I arrived in Vietnam in the morning two days later because of crossing the International Date Line. With all that darkness, I got a lot of sleep on the flights and felt fairly fresh for a walk around the city. I could have even cycled the first local route of 30km the same day had I arrived a day later.
Waiting in the lobby for the Grasshopper representative on my second morning, I found a family group of four Americans sitting there too as they were joining me on the tour. We wouldn’t ride together but would need to co-ordinate transfer pick up times.
Our bikes were set up outside the hotel in Hue and our guide explained use of the Wahoo Element that had the 7 days’ pre-loaded routes to follow. I swapped my own pedals but decided the saddle they provided on the Norco Reach gravel bike was sufficiently similar to mine. The American family comprised an adult brother and sister and their parents who were riding three budget rentals and an e-bike. When I spoke to them later about how they managed to get out to prepare for this adventure during a Seattle winter, they said they commuted to work by bike. Only the Stepdad admitted to having done little which was why he had asked for the e-bike.
I set off around 10:30 for the first day’s tour of some eclectic locations in Hue. These included an old arena where elephants fought tigers, an abandoned water theme park and an emperor’s tomb. The most difficult part of the journey was at the very start where I had to crossing the main traffic stream to head west out of the old town centre. However, once I turned down a back lane, the bustle of motorbike traffic disappeared and I was pretty much on my own. Dogs, that I had been told would be seen everywhere, were well-behaved and merely curious. I guess they were so used to motorbike traffic that they don’t bark, chase or get in the way of other two-wheeled bikes.
My route computer was reasonably accurate though a diversion around a growing garbage dump sent me down a rough lane and I had to consult Google Maps to get back on track. You definitely need to have data on your phone for this additional navigational aid.
I stopped at the tourist attraction of Emperor Tu Duc’s tomb but felt a bit out of place in my cycle clothing mingling with the tourists in normal clothes. Some Vietnamese women were wearing traditional long Ao Dao dresses for selfies but the location is clearly a stop for Western visitors on tour buses. Had I taken my guidebook with me, I am sure I could have learned much more of Emperor Tu Duc, but the buildings, statues and lakes in their woodland setting were an attractive sight all the same. From there, my route wended around the abandoned theme park with its surreal fifty-foot high dragon feature that stood on an island in a lake.
Somehow, I cycled past the suggested café stop and rode downhill to a small ferry boat to cross to the west side of the Perfume River. The ferryman didn’t wait for others but just loaded my bike over the gunnel and we were off for a five-minute phut-phut journey to the far shore. Had there been any perfume smell to the river at this time of year, it would have been overwhelmed by the boat’s exhaust fumes.
I returned to the old town past a 5-tiered pagoda, again on the tourist bus route. I rode on to the Citadel where I posed by the enormous national flag that flies from a mast on top of the ramparts. The whole journey of some 30km took a couple of hours of riding, excluding stops, but was good enough for a shakedown of the bike. All I needed to adjust was the saddle height.
For the ride out of Hue the next day, I could go at my own pace and arrive as early as I wished at the hotel that was situated on a lagoon over the first range of hills to the south. Disappointingly, it had rained overnight and was forecasted to drizzle all day but with the air temperature at 22⁰C this was nothing to fret over and nothing a Gortex jacket couldn’t deal with.
My Wahoo head unit guided me eastwards toward the sea along a very rough path of chopped up brick and mud. The jarring ride would have been easier on 45mm tires at lower pressure and it was a relief to be on the more usual concrete slab residential roads. Eventually, I was riding the main road linking villages but the traffic was never heavy, far more motorbikes than cars or trucks.
Stopping on the way for coffee, I was introduced to the child-sized plastic chairs that are the standard seating for these open-sided cafes. The kiddy chairs would not fit the standard north American butt though no-one local had an issue fitting in them and I was fine too. After a long bridge, the last kilometres of the journey led me around a huge lagoon where small fishing boats were active. Near the resort, my way was barred by a stream outlet that at high tide appeared to me to be too deep to ford. I opted for a detour inland to avoid soaking my shoes further but learned from the American group, who arrived later, that it was shallower than it looked.
I rated the resort at Lantana the best of the hotels on this tour and was sad not to staying longer to take advantage of the facilities and the peaceful setting. Our group dined together and discussed the following day’s route over Hai Van pass and into Da Nang. I intended to ascend Monkey Mountain in Da Nang too, so let them know I was going to set off promptly at 8am.
On that third day, there was a lower pass to cross first and then a drop down to the coastal plain before tackling the main challenge of Hai Van Pass. With a tailwind, I was riding at 30kph at times and enjoying traffic-free roads with smooth surfaces. A string of derelict hotels along the coast told of some past economic failure, but the seaside resort of Lang Co was lively and thriving.
From Lang Co, the climb to Hai Van Pass is heralded by the elevated highway that goes through the mountain via the new road tunnel. The old road passes under this new highway before climbing up to go over the Pass. Never reaching 10% gradient, the road ascends in a series of steps with intervening flatter stretches that allow you to catch your breath. On the steeper ramps, I noticed my chainring was creaking but luckily nothing too disturbingly. However, I was feeling how much heavier the Norco bike was than my own carbon bikes, particularly as it was fitted out with a carrying frame, cycle bags, first aid kit and spare parts. Consequently, it took me some 50 minutes to reach the cafés at the Pass. Mist and drizzle spoiled the view there, though I caught brief glimpses of Da Nang and its northern beaches through breaks in the cloud.
Sweeping down from the Pass, I enjoyed the speed and made my way over a major bridge and past a fleet of fishing boats to the climb up Monkey Mountain, aptly signaled by a Rhesus Monkey sitting in the roadway scavenging fruit. A warning sign that automatic scooters were not allowed further than 3km up the hill because of the grade made me question my decision. With the gradient ramping, I gained altitude rapidly and enjoyed great views down to Da Nang but climbing that hill was tough on the heavy bike.
Eventually, I reached a check point for entry further up the mountain but the guard didn’t bother to register my passage. The mist thickened becoming drizzle and then rain as I climbed up the killing 10% grade. With no view and no power left in my legs, I turned back at an arbitrary “viewpoint” enjoying the free ride down.
With thousands of others, I stopped at the giant Lady Buddha statue on the way to the agreed pick-up location near some swanky beachside restaurants on the city’s main seafront. As I was a little early, I enjoyed a bowl of Abelone soup in the “Mad Platter” Restaurant, Da Nang being a very cosmopolitan city for Vietnam. My driver recognized me while I was sitting on a bench outside and we had a long chat waiting for the others before the 50-minute transfer to Hoi An.
Beautifully located, right on the riverside in Hoi An, the Lantana was a comfortable base for three nights and I even made use of the outdoor pool one morning. On the fourth day, the others opted not to ride while I rode out around paddy fields on the suggested short recovery ride. Riding through the morning rush hour traffic in the old town was as manic as the traffic in old town Hue ,but the countryside was a serene patchwork of emerald green paddy fields, frequented by a few field labourers and a couple of water buffalos.
Rain returned as I headed back to the hotel for coffee, passing lines of western tourists being led out on rickety rental bikes. In one group the guide was actually riding a gas-powered moped so the first two guests in his line were riding in a cloud of oily smoke.
For our ride to My Son Sanctuary the next day, I arranged with the Americans to keep track of each other’s movements via a WhatsApp link. They seemed incapable of keeping to any schedule anyway so at least this way I would know where they were and could let the pick-up driver know later.
Travelling back through the old town at 8:30am, I again encountered rush hour motorbikes before turning south over a wartime engineer’s bridge. The loose plate deck that articulated and creaked alarmingly every couple of feet, even with the weight of a bicycle. Striking southwest through the paddy fields, I encountered a slight headwind but enjoyed this fresh breeze after the motorbike exhaust fumes in town. Some of the linear villages on this leg stretched on forever.
Crossing a river on a railway bridge, I was setting up to take a photo when a local local farmer opted not to walk around me on the pedestrian walkway but set off along the railway track. This wouldn’t have been unusual except there was nothing in-between the wooden sleepers, just a big gaps to step over and a twenty-metre drop to the slowly churning river.
At My Son Sanctuary, I mistakenly thought I could cycle the first section past the ticket gate but I was sent back to park my bike. As I had pushed myself to reach the Sanctuary early so I could experience a leisurely stroll through the ruins, I elected not to walk the final 1.5km but to take the free electric shuttle. Very quickly, the shuttle enters the jungle with palm trees and dense vegetation flanking the route to the main sanctuary site
I captured the last few minutes of a Champa dancing performance at the site’s theatre, before walking to the ruins themselves. Fearing large crowds, I was surprised to be on my own at times, even at the most popular parts of the grounds. There was a palpable sense of serenity there broken only by birdsong from the forest. While I’d been warned the temples had all-but been destroyed by B-52 bombing, I was more than satisfied with what remained and felt it gave a good impression of the original temples from a millennia ago. As a reminder of the ruination of the highest temples, a rusting pair of disarmed American Mk82 500lb bombs are located in one of the display halls right next to a thousand-year-old stone carving.
I walked the whole way back to the entrance arch, savouring the tranquility of the sanctuary and found that the family group had just arrived as I was leaving. I messaged them I was back-tracking to the recommended restaurant, even though that incurred a 10km detour. Once again, I tried my Vietnamese at the restaurant and once again even single words failed so I was resigned to pointing at the menu pictures. The local specialty of Quan Mi, thick, flat noodles was very tasty but there were probably half a dozen similar places I could have stopped at that were actually on the route.
Having finished my lunch, I set off slowly and took in my surroundings so as not to reach the pick-up point too early. I needed to re-cross the main river initially and then work my way through numerous small villages. In one hamlet, brightly robed monks were engaged in a late New Year ritual, symbolically burning offerings at the side of the street. Their long robes were in contrasting metallic colours of yellow, blue and purple.
So engrossed in my immediate surroundings as I was, I missed a signaled turn though this mistake proved to be fortuitous as I happened across a small shrine. The shrine was dedicated to a wartime martyr who was killed fighting in that area. The memorial read that he was a 25-year-old literary student from a northern district studying at Hanoi university. Anyway, my detour only cost me a couple of kilometres but confused the Wahoo unit into taking me east instead of west when I reached a main road. Even with that error, I reached the driver and van at 15:00 and had plenty of time for an iced coffee before the others appeared some 30 minutes later.
Dining in restaurant by the river that night was an enjoyable experience at Hoi An, where lantern-bedecked boats drifting past every so often adding to the atmosphere. I had made some friends with the reception staff so was sad to be departing for Stage 5 of the journey to Tam Ky next. I was further dismayed to find that overnight rain was continuing as I set off along the brick paved street, trying to avoid the puddles. Had I known then what riding in intense sun and high humidity was like perhaps I would have been more grateful for the cloud and wet!
Even the rise over the main river bridge felt hard that morning so I realized I must have been exerting myself on the previous days. Also my own Garmin head unit kept informing me I was only “5% adapted to the heat”.
The main point of interest on that Day 6 of the ride was a visit to the Heroic Mother Memorial and the adjacent war memorial about 40km into the ride, so I was glad to find a café right at their approach road. I quickly learned that you were not permitted cycle up that road when an official bawled something at me and pointed back down to the start where I dismounted and locked the bike up.
At a cost apparently of $20M US, the Heroic Mother Memorial is on a grand scale featuring heads carved in concrete and emulating a female version of Mount Rushmore overlooking a reflecting pool. Central to the carvings is the head of Nguyen Thi Thu the most famous heroic mother who lost numerous children and grandchildren in wars against the French and then the Americans and who was effectively a Viet Cong insurgent or freedom fighter, depending on your perspective. The actual “mountain” is built on a steel frame with an interior exhibition hall depicting the lives of several heroic women as well as Nguyen Thi Thu. Photos of women wading across rivers with ammo boxes and rocket launchers on their backs adorn the walls.
I then stopped at the provincial war memorial next door that lists the names of around 70,000 fighters from the Qaun Nam region, a fraction of the national total of 1.1 million Northern soldiers that were killed in the American War as they term it.
Moving further along the coast I was glad to reach the ferry to my final destination at midday but found it moored up with no sign of life. A woman at the ferry café informed me it wouldn’t depart till 13:00 so I accepted her proffered coffee with milk and sheltered from the rain. Fortunately, I wasn’t cold but I did feel pretty soggy. Eventually, the ferry captain returned just after 13:30 when he saw half a dozen motorbikes waiting to cross I departed with them 25minutes “early”. The schedule board only indicated it operated between 6am and 6pm but did not suggest how frequently, so I’ve no idea if there ever was a set time.
Entering La Domaine Resort, I quickly realized this was far more rustic than the pictures had portrayed, and with only 12 villas it was being run by a skeleton staff. We appeared to be the only guests. Still the shower was hot and drinks, snacks and meals were available so there was nothing to complain about.
By cutting their stops short and lucking out on their ferry departing immediately, the family arrived just an hour after me. In the inclement weather that persisted, I was quite content to sit at my villa and write – I wasn’t too bothered that there were no real facilities or that the waves in the lagoon were too rough to venture out on a kayak.
Scanning the weather forecast, I was glad to see cloud and then sun predicted for our last day but I should have been careful what I wished for. I chose to head off at 8am before the Americans were organized, and to my luck, I reached the southern end of the island just as the ferry there was departing – the attendant had to reopen the gate to let me on. Apparently, I should have paid at the kiosk on shore but an Indian cyclist, riding a Brompton bike, assured me from his experience no one would be bothered. He was riding from Hanoi to Saigon on his folding machine but seemed to be riding at only walking speed when I waved goodbye the ferry ramp.
I realized I would reach Son My really early so called at a street stall for a Ban Mi and then walked over the road for a sit-down coffee. Oddly, food and coffee often seem to be sold separately in Vietnam. While quietly enjoying my coffee, I was suddenly startled by an explosive bang outside. There, lying in the road were the remnants of electric insulators and the cross bar from a hydro pole. A technician in orange overalls was at the top of the pole working on the spaghetti of wires and had either intentionally or accidently released 50kg of steel and ceramics onto the main road, ten feet from where my bike was parked. I looked at the café lady and she just gave what for the Vietnamese passes as a shoulder shrug.
Looking at my arms, I realized I was getting burned despite sunscreen and when I went back outside, I found the sun was fully out so it was both bright and intensely warm. Luckily, I only had about 20km to ride but I took in a diversion to a Buddhist temple after seeing a towering Lady Buddha to rival the one in Da Nang being constructed on a hill some 5km south of my route. The short climb up the temple approach ride was strenuous in stultifying heat and the final climb up the steps on foot was much more tiring than it should have been. It was amusing to observe the almost- complete Lady Buddha rising to 400 feet with a crane over her head and scaffolding on her lower skirts.
Returning back to my route, I followed the road inland from the sea to Son My, a short distance of a few kilometres. This was the same road that villagers who had gone to the fish market before 7am on March 16th 1968 would have walked back along later only to find their village destroyed. From the coastal plain, the road slowly rises to thinned jungle with palm trees. Today, there is continuous development along the road right up to the site of the Son My village. The Vestige Site as it is termed comprises a museum, a monument and then a park-like preservation of the village grounds with the foundations of houses preserved in concrete where they originally stood before being raised to the ground. As you can imagine, it is very sobering to see both the village remains and the photo exhibition in the museum.
As I was sitting outside in the shade afterwards reflecting on what I had read and seen, a woman approached and introduced herself as the museum director. She wasn’t normally there on a Saturday but that day she had been greeting a Danish journalist and photographer who were visiting the site and interviewing survivors in order to write a book. I was honoured she took fifteen minutes to talk with me.
Once the rest of our party was there, we loaded the bikes, changed quickly and took the slow drive up to Da Nang Airport. There the adventure was suddenly all over as I had to catch a flight back to Han Noi. It had been a great week of cycling covering almost 500km through land and among people completely unfamiliar to me. I left with a great fondness for both.
