Road conditions in Vietnam

First the heat may knock the stuffing out of you, the road is OK with heavy heavy traffic ,I was there about 5 months ago ,if you can handle the heat the Ks should not be a drama.

Ralph lives in Nga Trang and may post here with some good info.

Edited by: boagy

Thanks boagy. I think December should be better than June in terms of heat (I'm even afraid that it may get cold in the evening). But your "heavy heavy traffic" worries me a bit. Is the shoulder on roads wide? Or is there any shoulder at all?

Arti, the 3 skinny bikers rode this route in January 2010 and our ridden distance was about 540km and took us 4.5 days. The heat's not a problem and the road is not too busy just beware the usual trucks & buses. The main dificulty is that towns & hence accommodation are unevenly spread along the route so you cannot easily ride an "average" distance each day. One day we rode 120km and another day only 64km. The route is quite hilly but not unduly steep and once in the Highlands the road undualtes with great views. To find our blog Google 3skinnybikers.

Wow, SkinnyBiker, you guys are really skinny! Nice blog.

According to the blog and the pictures, were you biking occasionally on the HCM highway and occasionally off to some dirt roads? How did you know if those dirt roads will lead you back to HCM highway?

I'm using a Garmin GPS device, too. Did you buy the GPS map from the Garmin website or other sources? Does the map cover the small roads as well?

Sorry, I have a lot of questions, cause I'll be traveling alone so want to get as much information as possible before I start.

I wish I can be as skinny as you guys after the trip. I always think that I can ride faster if I lose some weight :-p

I was there a year or so ago.

I seem to remember one big hill a couple of days out of Hoi An. Maybe 1700 metres onto a high barren plateau. It was raining for the climb, but really beautiful. The top was cloudy/misty and pretty barren with hill people living in shacks. Big drop down. After that the traffic picks up - that is the Central Highlands. Not really highlands, it is a large flat plain between two mt ranges. Traffic not too bad except at roadworks where the road got bad, narrow and vehicles bunched. Roadworks may be finished now so much better. Generally the road surface on HCMC very good till you get south of BMT.

The road was definitely undulating. I remember one time thinking how much climbing you do on an undulating road - effectively half your day is climbing, that could be 50 kms. Also on undulating roads you are always in too high a gear, trying to carry the speed from the lat descent. Long climbs be are much easier.

Agree about accom spacing - my lowest was just over 30 kms, but I wasn't rushing!

Oh, so it sounds like there's a bit of hilly area, better save a few more days for the ride then. Think I'll skip Hue and get the train from Hanoi to Danang and start the ride there. Afterall, the Hue city looks like some ancient Chinese style places which I've seen enough in China trips.

Hue is OK, I got stuck there for 5 days due to some horrendous weather. Unless you are into heavy duty sightseeing the main thing to see is the citadel - you may have seen photos of red flag flying during the Tet Offensive.

The main problem with skipping Hue is that you miss the Hai Van Pass. That is a great climb with wonderful views of mts and sea. It is even better that there is now a tunnel that takes most of the traffic.

South of the HV the weather is always better. It is like a dividing line.

Are you aware that you don't take your bike with you on the train. You have to book it in a day or so in advance.

In Vietnam we used the Reise know-maps available from Stanfords in London - at 1:600,000 they show sufficient detail for riding the main roads. Our GPS had a very basic map with the route loaded from Google maps to give us the rough route and avoid wrong turnings. We didn't venture off road much. GPS mapping is now much more detailed and available such as OSM you just have to search and download what's useful. Hoi An to BMT is easily rideable in 5 days.
No problem with bikes on trains you just have to arrive 30mins early to load your bike in the baggage wagon.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download is a useful starting point for Garmin maps.

Skinny, I don't agree about the bikes on trains. You can do that on some trains, eg going to Lao Cai, but definitely not on others. I have train'd Hanoi to Dong Hoi and Saigon to Nha Trang and they insisted I check bike in early as it goes on slow baggage train.

There are some express trains that can take it with you but not all and if you get it wrong, you run the risk of bike arriving a day after you.