Each bike tour has it’s own rhythms, and the one we are on now, Vietnam, is no different. However, it used to be that our tours followed one method of travel, where we rode as far as we could on any given day, arriving tired and hungry, stayed overnight wherever we landed and then took off the following morning, repeating the process until we went home. Rest days were rare, no more than 1x a week. Yes, we were younger and more athletic, and also we had less time. But along the way we realized that we were missing something. While the bike ride part was (and is) great, and much more immersive and interesting than driving, we were not taking time to explore places along the way. We began to realize that it would probably be more fun to travel with a bike than just go on a bike tour. Sometimes, we would ride, other times transport the bike in a car/bus/train to then ride around a place, hopefully making the best use of our time. Another factor is that Vietnam is inexpensive, so staying someplace is easy financially. A nice hotel is $20-30, and meals are often less than $5 for two.
Neither one of us has ever been to Vietnam. And so this trip we are spending more time in each spot as tourists! When we are traveling by bike, we love being on the small roads and paths, seeing parts of the country that most people don’t experience. And other times, it’s been great to just have our bikes with us and use them to explore the area, go shopping, and do simple chores using our bikes for transportation like we do at home. So this is a hybrid bike tour, partly so we have time to explore, partly because Vietnam is not small, and partly because we only have a 30-day visa, and if we want more time we need to leave Vietnam and come back in. Right now we’re planning on staying 30 days in Vietnam and then heading to Cambodia for a bit.
And so, we took a shuttle bus with our bikes from Mai Chau to our next destination of Tam Cốc, a distance of about 100 miles.
The shuttle service, in a brand new sprinter van, cost $30US for us and the bikes. The way to Tam Cốc is on a busier road and we opted to avoid that. And Tam Cốc is less than 10 miles from Ninh Binh, from which we’ll be again taking public transport (an overnight train) from Ninh Binh to Hue, which takes about 10 hours. From there we’ll do some more cycling, but we’ll need to take other public means of transport just to make it to Ho Chi Minh City in time.
Tam Cốc is a pretty touristy place, but the back streets are tiny, winding and authentic. The main road is lined with restaurants, vegetable sellers, grilling meats and shops. It’s energetic and positive. Our homestay is on a back street, actually more of a path, but has a pool and is quite comfortable. Entering town, we chose a restaurant from the many, and had lunch. The bowl was bigger than usual with generous amounts of goodies and very very yummy.
The main attraction are row boat rides on two different river systems (Tam Coc and Trang An), flanked by steep karst mountains and through caves.
We rode the 6 miles to Trang An on tiny roads and passed a circle of sculptures of all the animals of the Chinese zodiac and some water buffalos clearly enjoying being the water. And other sights.
In Trang An, it’s a picture of efficient organization. There’s a place to park our bikes with a guard, costing about $0.40. Ticketing and getting on a boat with a rower/guide is a snap. We have a woman rower who transports us to caves and temples, over about 3 hours, all by rowing. It’s all done without motor boats of any kind. The sights are amazing.
Along the way, we are recruited to take photos of a bunch of ladies who all work together. And then they insist on taking our pictures too. It was fun.
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