Vietnam by bicycle, fourteen days
Thirteen riding days, 627 km and about 3,555 metres of climbing, from the limestone lanes of Ninh Binh over the Hai Van pass, across the red earth of the Central Highlands and down onto the canal paths of the Mekong Delta. A support vehicle runs with the group all day, every day, and getting into it costs you nothing.
At a glance
- Duration
- 14 days, 13 nights, 13 riding days
- Party size
- 2 to 10, private
- Starts
- Hanoi, bike fitting on the afternoon of Day 1
- Ends
- Ho Chi Minh City
- Effort
- 627 km and 3,555 m of ascent; longest day 62 km, biggest climb 620 m
- From
- USD 3,390 per person
Who this is for
Anyone who rides two or three times a week at home and can sit on a bicycle for four hours without dreading it can do this trip. That is a deliberately low bar and the numbers behind it are published further down the page rather than hidden in a brochure: thirteen riding days, 627 kilometres, about 3,555 metres of total ascent, a longest day of 62 km and a single biggest climb of 620 metres, which is the Hai Van pass on Day 5. Spread across a fortnight that is an average of 48 km a day. Most riders find the heat and the humidity harder than the distance.
The route was chosen for road surface first and scenery second, which is the opposite of how these itineraries are usually built. Vietnam has a great deal of extremely unpleasant riding on it — Highway 1 in particular, which we touch for a total of about four kilometres in fourteen days. What it also has is thousands of kilometres of two-metre concrete canal paths in the delta, empty red-earth lanes through the coffee and pepper country of the highlands, and dyke roads in the north where the only other traffic is a motorbike carrying ducks. Those are the roads this trip uses.
Riders who want the north instead of the length of the country should look at the shorter regional trips: Ninh Binh and Pu Luong covers the best of the limestone lanes in four days, and the five-day Central Highlands trip takes the same plateau roads at a walking pace with the same vehicle behind you. If you want to travel this route without the bicycle, the twelve-day north to south is the comparable trip.
Day by day
Arrive in Hanoi, get fitted, ride 12 flat kilometres
You are met inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai and driven the 25 km and 45 minutes into the city. The afternoon is fitting: saddle height, reach, cleats if you brought pedals, and a proper ride on the actual bicycle you will use for the fortnight rather than a nod in a hotel lobby. Our fleet is aluminium-framed hybrids with 700 × 38c tyres, hydraulic disc brakes and a 1× drivetrain with a 34-tooth low sprocket, which is the gear that matters on Day 5 and Day 8. Bring your own saddle and pedals if you have strong opinions; most people do.
The shakedown is 12 km out and back along the Red River dyke path, which is paved, flat and largely free of cars, and its whole purpose is to find the problems today rather than at kilometre thirty on Day 2. Anything that needs adjusting gets adjusted this evening. Your guide goes through the fortnight over dinner with the elevation profiles printed, and hands out the route notes.
Down to Ninh Binh and the first 32 km among the limestone
The van leaves at 08:00 for Ninh Binh, 95 km and an hour and three quarters south on the expressway. Bikes go on the roof rack; you go in the seats. We are on the road by half past ten, which is early enough to get the ride done before the worst of the afternoon heat.
The afternoon ride is 32 km on a loop through Hoa Lu, the tenth-century capital, and out among the karst towers on lanes barely wide enough for a car. Around three kilometres of it is compacted gravel between fields; the rest is sealed. There is about 180 metres of climbing, all of it in short ramps of thirty or forty metres, and the only traffic is agricultural. We stop at the two temples at Hoa Lu, at a goat-meat place for a late lunch if you did not eat before riding, and at a duck pond for no reason at all. The van shadows the whole loop and is never more than about fifteen minutes behind.
The long Ninh Binh day — 58 km, a boat in the middle
The biggest northern day and the one that tells you what shape you are in. Away at 06:45, before the heat, on a 58 km loop that runs south through Tam Coc, out along the Van Long wetland dykes and back around the eastern side of the massif. Total ascent is about 340 metres, split across a dozen short rises and one continuous climb of roughly 90 metres over 2 km at kilometre 34, which is where the 34-tooth sprocket earns its place. Surface is sealed throughout; traffic is light except for six kilometres of provincial road at the far end where lorries do appear.
Halfway through we stop riding and get in a boat. The Trang An counters open at 07:00 and sell strictly in arrival order, so we buy at the start of the day and come back to the tickets. A boat carries four passengers plus one rower, at 250,000 VND a head; route 2 takes two to two and a half hours through four caves and four temples, and you spend it sitting down with your legs out in front of you, which after 34 km is the point. Back on the bikes at three for the last 24 km.
A short morning loop, then the flight to Hue
A deliberately easy 26 km before breakfast has settled: out at 06:30 on the dyke roads north of Tam Coc, including two kilometres of unsealed causeway across the wetland where you will get wet feet if it rained overnight. About 120 metres of ascent. Back at the hotel by nine, showered and packed by ten.
Then the moving day. Ninh Binh back to Noi Bai is about 120 km and two and a half hours; the flight to Hue is an hour and a quarter; the airport road into the city is forty minutes more. Bikes travel in the van with a separate driver who leaves Ninh Binh at first light and drives the 700 km south overnight — which is why they are waiting for you outside the hotel in Hue rather than going into the hold. You land mid-afternoon with the evening free, and the evening is worth having: the Perfume River bank on foot, and dinner somewhere with the Trang Tien bridge lit up.
The tombs loop, then over the Hai Van pass — the biggest climb of the trip
Two rides in one day, with a van transfer between them. The morning is 38 km around the royal tombs on the west bank of the Perfume River: quiet lanes through pine and eucalyptus, about 200 metres of climbing, and stops at Tu Duc’s tomb, which is a walled landscape of ponds and moss, and Khai Dinh’s, which is a black concrete pile with an interior of glass and porcelain mosaic. The combined ticket covering the Imperial City and three tombs is 530,000 VND and is included.
Lunch, then the van takes you the 65 km south to Lang Co, at the northern foot of the Hai Van pass. From there it is 18 km of riding with 420 metres of ascent to the summit at 496 metres — a steady four to six per cent on good tarmac with a proper shoulder, taking most people an hour and ten to an hour and forty. The pass is much quieter than it looks in old photographs because the tunnel below took the lorries and the coaches away in 2005. From the top it is a 12 km descent to the Da Nang side, then the van closes the last stretch into Hoi An, which is 30 km and 45 minutes. Total for the day: 56 km, 620 metres.
Hoi An — 44 km of flat, and the afternoon off
The recovery day, and it is placed here on purpose, the day after the biggest climb. Forty-four kilometres, seventy metres of ascent, nothing steeper than a bridge ramp. Out at 06:45 through the Tra Que herb gardens, where the beds are dressed with river weed and the soil smells of it, then south through the Cam Thanh water coconut palms on concrete village paths about a metre and a half wide, then a ferry crossing to Duy Vinh and back up the coast road past An Bang. Five kilometres of the route is village concrete with blind corners; the last three kilometres into town in the late morning is the only genuinely busy riding of the day.
Back before noon, and the afternoon is genuinely free — no scheduled activity, which on a fourteen-day trip matters more than another temple. Hoi An’s old town, which has been inside Da Nang city rather than Quang Nam province since the July 2025 reorganisation, is at its worst between ten and four and at its best from about half past five. Your guide will point you at the right hours and then leave you alone.
The long transfer to Kon Tum, and 28 km on the plateau at the end of it
The one day on this trip that is mostly a vehicle, and we would rather write it down than bury it. Hoi An to Kon Tum on the Ho Chi Minh Road is roughly 300 km and about six and a half hours, climbing from sea level to 525 metres over the Lo Xo pass, through forest that goes on for an hour at a time with nothing in it. Away at 07:00, two stops, lunch at Kham Duc.
We arrive around half past two and ride 28 km in what is left of the afternoon — the lanes east of Kon Tum along the Dak Bla river, which is a good short leg-loosener at about 210 metres of climbing on sealed road with almost no traffic. Kon Tum has a wooden cathedral built by French missionaries and a scattering of Bahnar communal houses with the steep thatched roofs the highlands are known for. We visit them the way you would visit a village hall: no performance, no arranged welcome, nobody paid to be there.
Kon Tum to Pleiku — 52 km and the second-biggest climb
A point-to-point day, which riders generally prefer to loops: 52 km south on Highway 14 with about 640 metres of ascent, mostly in the second half as the road grinds up onto the Pleiku plateau. Away at 06:30 to get the climbing done before the sun is high. The surface is good and the shoulder is generous, but be honest about what this road is: it is the main north–south artery of the highlands and it carries lorries. They are courteous and they give room, and the van rides behind the group with its hazards on for the whole leg. If that is not for you, this is the leg to sit out and nobody will think anything of it.
We turn off the highway for the last 12 km through coffee smallholdings on red laterite lanes, and finish at Bien Ho, a crater lake in an extinct volcano north of Pleiku, where the water sits about 60 metres below the rim. Late afternoon at a coffee processing yard: this is the middle of Vietnam’s robusta country, the country is the second-largest coffee exporter in the world, and the beans drying on the concrete outside every house in October are the reason.
The plateau day — 62 km, the longest of the trip, and the emptiest roads
The best riding day of the fortnight and also the longest: 62 km with about 780 metres of ascent, of which roughly 14 km is unsealed red earth. This is rolling country of coffee, pepper and rubber south of Pleiku, on lanes that exist to get a tractor to a field and carry perhaps one vehicle every ten minutes. Nothing is steep and nothing is flat; you climb thirty metres and lose twenty-five, forty times over.
The unsealed sections are firm and fast in the dry season and become sticky orange clay after rain, which is a genuine consideration between May and October — the van carries a plan B on tarmac and we will use it rather than pretending. Away at 06:15 because the distance is real; long lunch under a rubber stand around noon; and the van runs the last 90 km down to Buon Ma Thuot in the evening while you sit still. This is the day people remember, and it is also the day the van gets the most use, which are not contradictory statements.
Coffee estates at dawn, then a flight and the first delta night
A 42 km morning around Buon Ma Thuot, out at 06:00: through the coffee estates south of the city, six kilometres of estate track that is packed dirt rather than road, and out to the Dray Nur falls on the Serepok river, where the water drops about twelve metres across a hundred-metre front and is loud enough to be heard from the car park. About 380 metres of ascent, all in short rises. Back for a late breakfast and the bikes go into the van for the last time on this half of the trip.
The flight to Ho Chi Minh City is under an hour in the air and gets you south in time to be useful. From the airport it is 80 km and two hours south-west to Ben Tre, on the first of the delta’s big river islands. The change is abrupt and it is worth sitting with: you were at 500 metres in red dust this morning and now you are at two metres above sea level in a landscape that is more water than land. Evening ride optional — about 10 km on the canal path behind the hotel, and about half the group takes it.
Ben Tre to Tra Vinh — 55 km, two ferries, and paths a car cannot use
This is why people come to ride the delta. Fifty-five kilometres with about forty metres of ascent — the only climbing is bridge ramps — on concrete canal paths between a metre and a half and two metres wide, with a canal on one side and a coconut grove on the other. Cars physically cannot follow, which means the support van takes the road and meets you at fixed points; today it is at kilometre 18, 34 and 47, and your guide rides with the group.
Two ferry crossings, both small flat-decked things that take about eight minutes and cost a few thousand dong. Between them: brick kilns with their beehive chimneys, a coir yard where coconut husk is beaten into fibre, and long stretches of nothing but water palms. Tra Vinh, where we finish, is a Khmer town — around a third of the province is ethnic Khmer — with a hundred-odd Theravada pagodas, tamarind trees down the middle of the streets, and very few visitors of any kind.
Tra Vinh to Can Tho — 58 km, one big river, and the last long leg
Fifty-eight kilometres north-west with about fifty metres of ascent, mostly on sealed provincial roads a car can use, which after yesterday feels oddly exposed. Traffic is moderate: motorbikes, the occasional bus, and the delta’s particular hazard, which is rice drying on the tarmac in the harvest months and the family who spread it sitting beside it in the shade. Away at 06:30 to be off the road before the heat peaks at two.
The Hau, one of the two main branches of the Mekong in Vietnam, is crossed by ferry, and the crossing takes about twenty minutes on a boat that also carries lorries, motorbikes, and a woman selling coffee out of a bucket. Can Tho on the far side is the delta’s capital and a real city of over a million people, which after four days of canal paths is a shock. Early dinner: tomorrow starts before five.
Cai Rang at first light, orchard lanes, and the road back to the city
On the water at 05:15. Cai Rang is a wholesale floating market, not a show for visitors: boats come in loaded with one crop each, advertise it by hanging a sample from a bamboo pole at the bow, and trade with each other. It starts in the dark and is largely finished by eight, which is why the alarm is what it is. Breakfast is bought from a noodle boat that comes alongside.
Back on land by half past eight for the last ride: 40 km through the Phong Dien orchards on narrow lanes between rambutan, durian and pomelo, about 45 metres of ascent, almost no traffic, and a lot of monkey bridges you are not required to cross. We finish at noon, the bikes get washed and go on the rack, and the van runs the 170 km and three and a half hours back to Ho Chi Minh City. Evening in the city: your choice of a quiet dinner or Cho Lon after dark, and your guide will take you to either.
Ho Chi Minh City, and out
No riding. The morning is yours and there is a lot within walking distance of a District 1 hotel: the War Remnants Museum, which is one-sided and worth two hours anyway; the post office and the cathedral square; or Ben Thanh market if you want to buy coffee to take home, which most people do after the highlands.
If you brought your own bicycle, it comes back to you cleaned, with the chain degreased and re-lubricated and the drivetrain checked, and we will box it for the flight — bring your own box or tell us at least a week ahead and we will source one. Airport transfer is timed to your flight with three hours in hand for an international departure, because Tan Son Nhat at five in the afternoon is not a place to be optimistic about.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 4,410 | USD 5,650 | USD 6,390 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 3,990 | USD 5,110 | USD 5,790 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 3,640 | USD 4,660 | USD 5,280 |
| 7 – 10 | USD 3,390 | USD 4,340 | USD 4,920 |
The columns change the hotels and nothing else. The bicycles, the support van, the second driver who moves the fleet south overnight on Day 4, the guide who rides with you and the spares he carries are identical whichever column you pick. That is worth stating plainly because on a cycling trip the expensive part is not the bed: it is a van that does 2,000 kilometres shadowing a group at 20 km/h, a mechanic’s time every evening, and a fleet of bicycles that has to be maintained rather than rented.
Two of the overnight stops — Kon Tum and Tra Vinh — have no upper-tier hotel at any price, so on those nights all three columns get the same room and we say so on the quotation rather than quietly charging for a difference that does not exist. Party size moves the number far more than class does: the van, the guide and the mechanic cost the same whether two of you ride or eight. The full breakdown is on what a Vietnam trip costs, and deposits, dates and cancellation are on how to book.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Thirteen nights as listed, in the class you choose, every one with secure indoor bicycle storage
- Bicycle hire for fourteen days: aluminium hybrid, 700 × 38c tyres, hydraulic discs, 34-tooth low sprocket, helmet, bottle cages, saddlebag and a spare tube per rider
- A support vehicle running with the group every riding day, with a rack, cold water, ice towels, fruit and a first-aid kit
- A mechanic travelling with the group; every bicycle checked, cleaned and adjusted each evening
- A private English-speaking guide who rides with you rather than following in the van
- Two internal flights: Hanoi–Hue and Buon Ma Thuot–Ho Chi Minh City, economy
- The overnight vehicle transfer of the bicycle fleet from Ninh Binh to Hue on Day 4
- All entry fees named in the day-by-day, including Trang An at 250,000 VND and Hue’s 530,000 VND combined ticket
- Meals as shown: 13 breakfasts, 11 lunches, 9 dinners, plus roadside fruit and water all day
What it does not include
- International flights, quoted separately at cost on request
- Vietnam e-visa: USD 25 single entry, USD 50 multiple, about three working days at evisa.gov.vn
- Travel insurance, which we require and will ask to see — it must cover cycling as an activity, and many standard policies do not
- Your own pedals, shoes, saddle, padded shorts and gloves, which we strongly suggest you bring
- Bicycle hire is included but damage caused by a crash is not; we charge parts at cost and no labour
- Drinks with meals, the four dinners not listed, and personal laundry
- Tips for the guide, the driver and the mechanic — customary, never invoiced
A support vehicle runs with the group every single riding day, and on the canal-path days when it physically cannot follow, it meets the group at named points a maximum of eighteen kilometres apart. You can get in it at any time, for any reason or none, and get out again whenever you want. Nobody records it, nobody comments on it, and the guide will not ask why. Riders use it for the last 12 km on Day 3, for the highway section on Day 8 and for the whole of the wet half of Day 9 in an average group, and those are all normal. A trip where the van is only for the defeated is a worse trip and produces riders who hurt themselves proving a point.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Five honest exclusions, all of which we would rather you read now than discover on Day 8.
- Anyone who has not ridden a bicycle in the last year. This is not a technical trip, but 627 km in thirteen days on a body that has not turned a pedal since school is a recipe for knee pain by Day 5. Ride 40 km at home, twice, before you book. If that is genuinely unpleasant, take the twelve-day north to south instead and see the same country from a seat.
- Road cyclists who want to ride hard. The average is 48 km a day, the group waits at junctions, and there are villages where 12 km/h is the correct speed. If your idea of a cycling holiday is a 120 km day and a paceline, you will spend a fortnight frustrated.
- Children under about fourteen, and anyone under 150 cm. Our smallest frame does not fit below that, we do not use tag-alongs on public roads here, and the delta canal paths have unfenced two-metre drops into water on one side for kilometres at a stretch.
- Anyone travelling in October or November who cannot absorb central Vietnam’s flood season. Days 4 to 7 run through Hue, Hoi An and the Ho Chi Minh Road; in 2025 that region recorded 1,739.6 mm of rain at Bach Ma in twenty-four hours and at least 219 people died between mid-October and early December. We reroute rather than ride through it, and rerouting means van days.
- Anyone who needs to be on the bicycle every kilometre for the trip to have been worth it. Two days are dominated by transfers — Day 4 and Day 7 — and Day 14 has no riding at all. That is the price of covering 1,600 kilometres of country in a fortnight, and it is arithmetic rather than laziness.
The riding, in numbers
Every figure below is measured, not estimated, and it is on the page before you pay rather than in a document that arrives with the final invoice. Ascent is total climbing for the day, not the height of the biggest hill.
| Day | Distance | Ascent | Surface | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Hanoi | 12 km | 20 m | Paved dyke path | Very light — bicycles and pedestrians |
| 2 · Ninh Binh | 32 km | 180 m | Sealed lanes, 3 km compacted gravel | Very light — agricultural |
| 3 · Ninh Binh | 58 km | 340 m | Sealed throughout | Light; 6 km of provincial road with lorries |
| 4 · Ninh Binh | 26 km | 120 m | Dyke roads, 2 km unsealed causeway | Very light |
| 5 · Hue and Hai Van | 56 km | 620 m | Sealed, full shoulder on the pass | Moderate at Lang Co, light on the pass |
| 6 · Hoi An | 44 km | 70 m | Sealed plus 5 km village concrete | Light; busy for the last 3 km |
| 7 · Kon Tum | 28 km | 210 m | Sealed | Very light |
| 8 · Kon Tum to Pleiku | 52 km | 640 m | Highway 14, wide shoulder, then 12 km of lanes | Moderate — lorries, van rides behind |
| 9 · Pleiku plateau | 62 km | 780 m | Sealed plus 14 km red earth | Very light — one vehicle every 10 minutes |
| 10 · Buon Ma Thuot | 42 km | 380 m | Sealed plus 6 km packed estate track | Light |
| 11 · Ben Tre to Tra Vinh | 55 km | 40 m | Concrete canal paths 1.5–2 m wide, two ferries | Motorbikes only — no cars possible |
| 12 · Tra Vinh to Can Tho | 58 km | 50 m | Sealed provincial road, one ferry | Moderate; rice drying on the tarmac in harvest |
| 13 · Phong Dien | 40 km | 45 m | Orchard lanes | Negligible |
| 14 · Ho Chi Minh City | — | — | No riding | — |
| Total | 627 km | 3,555 m | 13 riding days | Average 48 km a day |
What the support vehicle actually carries
A sixteen-seat van with a roof rack for ten bicycles, driven by someone who has done this route rather than a driver hired for the fortnight. Inside: iced water and electrolyte, a cool box of fruit cut that morning, frozen towels, a floor pump, two spare wheels built to the same spec as the fleet, a full spares box, and a first-aid kit the guide is trained to use. It leapfrogs the group every fifteen to twenty kilometres on road days and waits at named points on the canal days.
On the three days where the group splits — the highway section of Day 8, the unsealed half of Day 9, and the last 12 km of Day 3 — the van does two runs rather than making anyone wait. That is planned for, not improvised, and it is the reason the guide rides and the driver drives instead of the usual arrangement where one person tries to do both.
Send us your dates and we will send back the elevation profiles
Tell us the fortnight and roughly what you ride at home, and we will come back with the day-by-day profiles, the likely weather for those exact weeks and an honest read on whether the plateau days will suit you — usually within one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
How fit do I need to be, honestly?
If you can ride 40 km at home on a Saturday and want to do something else on Sunday, you are fit enough. The average here is 48 km a day, the longest day is 62 km and the biggest single climb is 620 metres of total ascent spread across a day whose main feature is an 18 km pass at four to six per cent.
The real difficulty is not the profile, it is the heat and the humidity, which is why almost every day starts between 06:00 and 06:45 and why we are off the road before the two o’clock peak. Riders who struggle usually struggle on Day 2 or Day 3, before they have adapted, and are fine from Day 5 onward.
Can I really get in the van whenever I want?
Yes, at any time, for any reason, without explaining. The van is with the group all day on road days and meets it at points no more than 18 km apart on the two canal days when a vehicle cannot follow. Getting in is not recorded, not discussed and not treated as anything at all.
In a typical group most riders use it at least once — commonly for the highway section on Day 8 or the unsealed half of Day 9 — and a few use it most afternoons. Both are entirely normal. We would rather carry you for 20 km than have you finish the fortnight with an injury from riding through something you should not have.
What bicycle do I get, and can I bring my own?
Our fleet is aluminium-framed hybrids with 700 × 38c tyres, hydraulic disc brakes and a 1× drivetrain with a 34-tooth low sprocket, which is a gear low enough for the Hai Van pass with luggage-free legs. Helmets, bottle cages, saddlebags and a spare tube per rider are included. Electric assist with a 500 Wh battery is available for the whole trip as a supplement.
Bring your own bicycle if you would rather — we carry it, clean it and service it daily for a small handling charge, and we box it at the end if you tell us a week ahead. Whatever you decide, bring your own pedals, shoes, saddle and padded shorts. Those four things are personal and a fortnight is long enough for the wrong ones to matter.
Which months work, and which do not?
February to April is the best window overall: the north is dry and cool, the centre is in its dry season, the delta is dry, and the highland tracks are firm. November is the second answer, once the central rain has usually broken.
Avoid October and November if you cannot absorb disruption in the centre — that is the peak of the flood and typhoon season around Hue and Da Nang, and it is real rather than nominal. May to September is ridable in the north and the delta but the unsealed highland sections of Day 9 turn to clay, and the heat in the delta in June and July is genuinely hard work. See when to go for the month-by-month picture.
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Tell us about the trip you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.