We didn’t see a single cycle tourist in Vietnam, and that was both a surprise and a shame. We expected to see at least some intrepid Dutch or German cyclists, but there were none!
Vietnam is a pretty cool place to cycle tour. It has a huge number of small roads with little traffic, good availability of quality inexpensive lodging, cheap tasty food, super friendly people and careful drivers/riders who are used to 2-wheeled travelers. The scenery was amazing from the smaller roads, and it’s doubtful that anyone traveling by car or motorbike would see what we did traveling by bike. The public transport system for bikes is pretty good if sometimes confusing, and that made our trip possible since we took shuttles, taxis, buses, a train and planes to get from one area to another. In spite of the fact that we don’t speak Vietnamese, we got along fine with Google Translate and the usual non-verbal communication tools of holding up fingers for numbers and pointing to what we wanted. Some people speak a few words of English but it’s not common.
Our electronic maps of Vietnam were surprisingly accurate and basically indispensable. Of all the thousands of turns, there were only 2 instances where a road did not go through as mapped, which were minor inconveniences. The road surfaces were sometimes rough, and maybe a front shock would have been helpful but our wider tires did us well here.
Bikes did well. We didn’t have a single mechanical issue and didn’t even pump up our tires the whole trip! I oiled chains 1x. Wider tires were nice since we were in soft soil or sand more than a few times, and road surfaces were sometimes rough.
From our experience, it felt like a safe and honest country, for us, our money and our bikes. We always felt comfortable walking or riding, never under any threat, and we left our bikes overnight with a slender cable lock without fear. Some of that stems from the fact that parking areas and even grocery stores have attendants/guards that watch over parked bikes/scooters, etc, but also it just didn’t feel like stuff got stolen very much. At attractions we visited by bike, we would pay a nominal amount to park our bikes in a lot (it was required) and someone watched the bikes and controlled access. The cost was between $0.10 and $0.25.
For money, we used ATM’s to withdraw cash as we needed it. There are lots of ATM’s and most allow you to withdrawn about 3 million VND ($125 US) at a time. We used cash for most purchases. Shops put a surcharge of 3-5% on credit card purchases (like they did in NZ), and smaller shops only take cash anyway. We could have used credit more, but it was easier to pay cash. It’s hard to adjust to such large numbers on bills and calculate the exchange rate and if we sometimes momentarily offered the wrong amount, people would either give us back the change or gently take the correct bills from our wallet, or just hold up the number of fingers of more thousands of dong to give them.
On the negative side, trash is everywhere and that’s depressing and sad. Not surprisingly, it’s mostly plastic trash. Water from the tap is marginal and so most people drink water from plastic bottles. Vendors always want to put purchases in plastic bags. These are problems that many poor countries must deal with, and it’s certainly something that Vietnam needs to address. We saw plenty of people doing trash collection, but there clearly is illegal dumping happening as well as town dump sites not being cleared. The air can be polluted, and many Vietnamese wear masks while riding motorcycles and bicycles. Chris had some lung irritation from pollution and wore a mask a few days, but it’s also hot and humid so it’s hard to wear a mask while riding. The countryside air is better and we saw lots of electric scooters and motorcycles being used so the trend is for less pollution from scooters and motorcycles.
Would we return? Yes…we would! We’ve barely scratched the surface of Vietnam and would love to see more. Some routes may require us to rent motorcycles or e-bikes to do the distances/elevation gains required, or we might consider taking an organized tour. Now that we’ve come the first time, we have a better idea of what to expect to plan a next trip.
For riding, we rode 633 miles during our 30 days here. We rode 12 days from destination to destination and rode most days to explore an area when we were staying multiple days. Having a bike was great for errands and day trips.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/106YPhIxeN9JBqN5WhXyJe7Wr-J1jS12qxegw4SbcvfQ/edit
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