Category: Bike Touring
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Duc Pho to Phu My, carrying a watermelon!
While our mapping app takes care of making routes on small roads between two points, sometimes we decide that we want to go another way. The original way the mapping app suggested we go from Duc Pho to Phu My was up in the hills (the blue line) on small track, but it really looked…
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Navigating Vietnam: On to Đức Phố
This entire self-guided trip would be impossible without GPS and modern mapping and navigation tools. We are using the basic route of a commercial bike tour for our framework, but that tour description only lists destination towns, for the good reason that they don’t want to give people like us the entire route for free!…
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Rice and Weddings!! Leaving Hoi An
If there were two themes for today, they were rice and weddings, although not in the usual sense. First..rice. As we’ve traveled south, the rice is now ready for harvest and we saw rice being harvested and also drying by the side of the roadsides, in courtyards, on drive ways and in people’s yards. Rice…
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Hoi An
Our initial impression of Hoi An was of absolute tourist craziness, but the next day we got to see some of its quiet charms, in addition to seeing more of the tourist craziness. We went out before noon to stroll around the streets, and there were far fewer tourists out so that was a relief.…
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Over Hai Van Pass to Hoi An
We planned our stop in Lang Co so that we could start the climb over Hai Van Pass in the morning. Alas, we tarried and ate a leisurely breakfast, starting the climb at about 10AM when the heat of the day had already started. A lot of eloquent words have been written about Hai Van…
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Hue and south: Hundreds of Magnificent Tombs!
Hue was a really pleasant place to spend a couple days. In addition to being a vibrant but relaxed city, the weather has improved markedly as we’ve moved south. The north was marked by lots of grey skies and misty conditions. Down in Hue we actually saw blue skies and defined clouds, which was amazing.…
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From Ninh Binh to Hue: a 10-hour train journey
We had a great 3 days in Tam Cỗc. We visited the sites, enjoyed the vibe and had a good time exploring small roads by bike. We went for dinner to the same restaurant 3 nights in a row. The food and location was great, plus the owner charmed us with her energy. She even…
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Mua Cave and a beautiful view
We were just looking to explore a bit today and get a few miles in by bike, so we decided to ride first to Mua Cave just 3 miles away and then to go on to Bia Dihn Pagoda another 5 miles distant. Lonely Planet noted that Mua Cave was pretty unimpressive, but that the…
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Bamboo Chopstick Factory and Bún chả
Our map identified an attraction about 10 miles away called the Bamboo Chopsticks Factory, which sounded interesting. Actually, it might sound every more interesting in Vietnamese: “Công Ty Chế Biến Nông Lâm Sản Đạm Mai”. Definitely not trying to pronounce that! If you want to see more pics than mine, you can find some in…
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Onward from Hanoi – back on the bike!
Currently there are roughly 6.5 million motorbikes and scooters on Hanoi’s roads. The use of bicycles, once the dominant transport mode in the city, decreased dramatically as motorbikes and cars became more popular: in 1995, 47% of journeys were made by bicycle; in 2008, the figure had dropped to only 3%. The figure now must…