(a brief recap, perhaps to come back to with more detail some day)

I’ve wanted to push myself farther out of my bike touring comfort zone, in terms of traveling in a culture very different from home, and for long enough and at a slow enough pace that I start to pick up on the rhythms on daily life. I dove in to a four-week tour through Vietnam and Cambodia…

I have some new schedule flexibility when it comes to (unpaid) vacation, but it was hard to find bike friends with matching schedules, and for somewhere this new to me I didn’t really want to travel solo. So I joined a fully-supported tour (pre-booked hotels along a route, a van carries your bags each day, travel medic and bike mechanic on staff and available in the evenings, but you ride on your own at your own pace).

This is the general route we followed over four weeks and about 1200 miles, from Hanoi in the North down the Ho Chi Minh Highway, over Hải Vân Pass (I saw a lot of motorcyclists on this twisty road but no other cyclists…), down the coast through Hue (my favorite city of the trip?) and Hội An, then inland on much more remote mountainous roads (a few days without cell service– one guide had a satphone for emergency backup), across the border to Cambodia, then along riverside roads to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap:

Some stunning roads and landscapes:

Some of the other road users (I prefer riding with the chaos of scooter packs to the times we had to share the road with heavy trucks, especially on busy roads in Cambodia):

Some great food, especially the changing regional specialities we saw as we traveled (mountain goat, very different noodles and broth in the phở, long strings of Kampot peppercorns in Cambodia, etc):

And some more challenging weather and road conditions (a few days I was riding all day in the rain… at least most days it was warm so hypothermia wasn’t really a concern, just comfort…)

I also saw beauty in the everyday details:

This trip had some highs and lows (especially in terms of health and comfort three weeks in)… and I’m so glad I did it. This is the trip that inspired me to do more bike touring.

I also met a number of strangers who I’m still in touch with to this day, whether that’s meeting on another tour or via the occasional text chat or social media exchange.

Another note to future self, here’s how I packed for the trip (details in an old “what I pack for a supported hotel tour” list). Since I got to throw a large duffel on a truck each morning, I packed more spare bicycle parts than I normally would, just in case.

Perhaps I’ll revisit highlights and lowlights in more detail here, and add notes about top sights / restaurants / etc, some day…

Recap Update, 2025:

Years later, I’m looking back at a journal I kept during the ride to pull out some conclusions. I’m jotting them down here, no matter how earnest / goofy they seem now, since this blog is mostly just notes-to-my-future-self.

Some highlight memories include, in no particular order:

  • Riding by natural beauty that’s so different from home (in Northern Vietnam: karsts, dense forests, rice)
  • There’s something special about being in the presence of something vast (rock formations, oceans, etc), similar to the feeling of riding in the US Southwest.
  • Cold coconuts at a cafe, with other riders
  • Meeting an older local man on his rickety bike on the road. Without a shared language, we still exchanged smiles, took exaggerated “racing” postures on our bikes as we rode side by side, etc.
  • A few of us joining a group of bored waitresses outside a slow restaurant in Hue in playing something like hackeysack with a shuttlecock. The internet suggests it was Đá cầu. This only happened because someone else I was walking with was extremely outgoing and approached them to chat.
  • Hue was probably my favorite of the Vietnamese cities I saw (I expected to like Hoi An more but it felt like a victim of its own heavy-tourism success).
  • Riding up and over Hải Vân Pass
  • The visible change in building style and agriculture the minute we crossed the Vietnam/Cambodia border, even though the climate felt similar.
  • Cycling around Koh Trong, the delicious pomelo island of Cambodia.
  • Riding on more dirt and gravel than I ever had on a tour
  • Cemeteries along the coast of Vietnam
  • Almost every single thing I ate. In addition to the photos above, I now remember a piece of bamboo packed with sticky rice and beans, grilled over charcoal and sold on the side of the road in Cambodia.
  • The range of bare-bones (but very inexpensive) hotels. Not necessarily all comfortable but each an experience… the hotel at a less-used border crossing in particular!
  • and an egg for breakfast is a good start to day.
  • Colorfully painted buildings along the seaside– some seemed to be abandoned resorts, a sign of challenges (especially in the wake of Covid-19)
  • Cycling by a forest of rubber trees, seeing the latex dripping down into collection dishes (though there also appeared to be some children working there, sadly)
  • Seeing rhythms of daily life as we cycled starting early in the morning and continuing all day (especially the things you see early in the morning or in the evening– during a normal “vacation” it’s easy to not be out and about at those times): agriculture, kids scooting to school, deliveries, rest in the middle of the day, morning markets, evening group aerobics/exercise on the street, and so on.
  • Angkor Wat, as expected– I stayed here five days after the bike tour was over, with my partner who met me there, and there were easily five days of interesting temples and sites to see, since we had time to go farther out, boat and birdwatch on Tonlé Sap, and so on.
  • Festival performances and street fairs (in particular, being in Angkor Wat for Bon Om Touk, the water festival)

Some lowlights, though no more than I would expect on a trip this long and far away:

  • Some fast and dangerous-feeling traffic the last two days of road riding from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap– this is the only part of the route I wouldn’t ride again (the scenery was also less remarkable). Sometimes a car would pass a car that’s already passing: three cars abreast on a two-lane road. Having to hop off the road into a small ditch to avoid oncoming traffic on the wrong-side shoulder (from a double-pass coming the other way). I made up a little song to hum to myself “Stay Alive” (to the tune of Turn Around / Total Eclipse Of The Heart), as a mantra to my tired self to ride eyes-up alert, ready to react at any moment.
  • A few angry dogs snapped at my heels as I biked by.
  • Two teens (tweens?) on a scooter who yelled “money money money” at me and then cursed me out and swerved at me when I didn’t give them any (though 99% of my interactions with people this trip were positive).
  • Some unpleasant food-borne illness a few days after the tour ended (but thankfully, never during it, unlike some fellow riders)
  • A challenging day where we were biking up to a mountain pass on our way from Vietnam to Cambodia (10,000’+ of climbing), in the cold rain, on rough dirt roads, in a remote area with no cell service. I got three flats in two hours on multiple different tubes, and fixing them with cold, stiff hands was slow going. After it took me five hours to cover the first 35 miles (out of 85) to our pre-planned lunch stop where I met up with other riders and guides, I took a ride in the support van to the hotel (I think only the second time in my life I’ve used the ‘sag wagon’). In retrospect, this was a highlight of Type 2 Fun.

And some other things I learned about myself and this type of travel:

  • It took a while to connect socially with anyone, joining a tour with total strangers (many of whom were traveling with someone they already knew from the past). But once I did it was instant community around a shared experience.
  • Bring thrown into a community with people I share this one niche interest with (but who come from around the world and may be of widely different ages, interests, backgrounds, politics) is a healthy experience.
  • This kind of group is the best possible source for ideas about other adventurous travel-by-bike.
  • I felt adrift the first few days in Hanoi before the ride started (I got there early to see the city, get the bike dialed in, meet the guides, and so on)– everything felt better once we started riding.
  • As soon as I finished the first day I knew I’d made the right decision joining this (I’d been optimistic that would happen, but this trip was a substantial commitment of time, money, preparation), I felt deeply happy.
  • It took until ride day 6 for my body to feel adjusted / comfortable / used to biking this much. An argument for doing these sorts of multi-week tours…?
  • It helped to do set of standard stretches.
  • Hot (90F+ and direct sun) weather is very difficult for me– I need to swap up what I wear, soak my skin with water if I have enough, etc.
  • Feeling off? Eat a snack or drink a Coke: feel better in 15-30 minutes.
  • After an hour or two of riding alone I slide into a different mental state– more creative, more ideas for life, work, projects back home– maybe I need a clip-on voice memo recorder to take notes… Not looking at the internet / social media / news all day (or for several days) likely also helped..
  • Not sharing a language with locals is tough (many memorable travel experiences involve some impromptu connection with a stranger), but knowing at least a handful of conversational phrases seemed to light people up.
  • I actually really enjoy riding in intense rain and getting soaked and dirty, as long as it’s not too cold: “bring it on, is this the best you can do?”
  • When I lost use of my phone for three days (it got wet and I thought it was dead, in a rural area with no real options– two full days in a bag of rice and it started working again) I realized how dependent I am on it (for communication, navigation, and so on) and felt more anxiety than I expected not having it, like I was missing a sense.