Vietnam E-Bike Tour

The tour kicks off with an 8 am pickup from your Ho Chi Minh City Hotel. You should have your riding gear ready and easily accessible, but you need not wear it on the short flight up to Dalat. On arrival in Dalat, we will prepare for the ride, enjoy morning tea, and have a briefing on the tour ahead. Then we will ride into the city via a back route that takes us over a few hills with great views and some fun downhill sections.

Along our route today we will see coffee plantations and flower gardens as well as a number of small vegetable farms. The people in this area are generally referred to as highland people or hill tribes. There are three main ethnic minorities that make up the “hill tribes” and those in this area are typically the Lach tribes. Historically, hill tribes had been allowed a high degree of autonomy for various cultural reasons, but these days the youth are quite heavily integrated into the general lowland society, so many are in the cities. Often on these back roads, we can still see people wearing little bits and pieces of traditional dress and using some traditional farming practices.

We arrive at the hotel in the mid-afternoon and what a nice place it is to see out the day. With lovely views over the hills and a welcoming pool to cool off in, the hotel is a converted colonial-era property from the days when the French would retire to the hills to see out the hottest parts of the year.

After a delicious breakfast, we leave the hotel in the van to get past the traffic of the city, then enjoy a ride through undulating terrain on quiet roads. The occasional passing car or small truck will likely give you a toot and a wave, such is the entertainment value that your presence is likely to provide the locals.

Along the route today we will stop at a Bana House. The Bana people build houses out of wood and thatch with a roof pitch as you have likely never seen. It towers above the actual wood structure, the reasons for which your guide will delight in revealing for you.

The descent from the hills will leave you with an ear to ear grin and as you reach the foot a river comes into view, you have arrived at lunch. From here it is a short 1-hour drive into Nha Trang, a buzzing little coastal city, built around one of the best-known beaches in the country. Our hotel is just a short walking distance to the beach.

This morning a 3-hour transfer to get out of town to the starting point. the ride up to Quy Nhon is along a very nice stretch of road with views out over the sea. It is the kind of rolling road that winds around headlands and the momentum from one down is almost enough to ascend the next with minimal pedaling. We will stop about 7km short of the city to spend two nights in a secluded resort on a lovely beach that has quite a swell, it also has a good pool to cool off in. 

We start today with a van transfer to put us in an optimal ride start location. This is inland, to the north of the city. We will be riding through a landscape of rice fields and villages on quiet, concreted backroads where most other vehicles are motor scooters and local bicycles.

After a little while on the bikes, we come to the ruins of the Cham Towers. This particular site features a set of twin towers in an unrestored state and rarely with any other visitors. There are actually many ruins remaining along the coastal plain from Nha Trang and well north of here. The Champa Kingdom declined and eventually vanished in the 15th century. The towers are thought to date back to the 11th Century.

After a dive into Vietnam’s history we will return to the bikes for some more countryside riding, then the afternoon and evening is free to enjoy at your leisure. Your guide can help with any recommendations.

Today we set off for another province, Quang Ngai. To get there, we first ride along the coast into the city on rolling hills as we pass a former Leper Colony and then descend into Quy Nhon. Passing through the city along the harbor where colorful fishing boats are moored, we ride out over a bridge and up a stunning peninsula with massive sand dunes shielding our view of the ocean, but with a large lagoon on our left.

As we come over the first major hill the vista opens up. A beautiful coastline appears and suddenly you really see what all the fuss is about the coast of Vietnam. It’s a lovely ride and lasts all the way through to lunch where we pack up and transfer about 2 hours by van to a village called Thu Xa. This village is located on a river inlet just outside the provincial capital. It is a quintessential fishing village where squid boats can be seen moored during the mornings and then heading out to sea in the evening, with their bright lights dotting the horizon. The resort here is a recently opened property, aiming to introduce its guests to the local community in a low impact way while creating jobs for local people.

The day starts out on a sobering note this morning with a visit to the My Lai Memorial. The memorial, dedicated to the villagers who lost their lives in the massacre, is located nearby the resort in a village that became well known around the world and particularly in the US during the Vietnam/US War. In fact, it was said by many to be the most shocking episode in a shocking war.

Moving on, we start our ride from the memorial and pedal first on an inland route on small roads and then out onto the coast again. Here the coastline is flatter and often consists of peninsulas around inlets and lagoons. We move through this landscape with the assistance of small, community ferries where a motorized barge goes back and forth, loaded with motor scooter drivers, often with their scooters piled high with produce going one way or another. These are often the most amusing moments where the locals get a decent look at you all in your colorful riding gear and often there are questions as to what brings you to these parts.

We are staying this evening in another beach resort that has only opened very recently. It sits on a very long beach that is uninterrupted by headlands for almost 50km. Again, the developers were lured by the local government trying to create meaningful employment opportunities for their young, enthusiastic residents.

This is our final overnight location, so we will dine together before we enjoy our last ride the next day.

It is a fun ride to close with. After starting out on the bikes, we will stop at a local fish market that just sets up on the side of the road each day. There is minimal permanent infrastructure, just lots of buckets and basins full of fish and seafood. It’s such a colorful and vibrant scene and the vendors are extra cheeky in the morning, often cracking harmless jokes about the foreign visitors and getting a raucous cackle from their contemporaries. There are usually some snack vendors around the edges, so we can try some of the traditional morning snacks that are found in this area.

The ride from here is through small fishing and farming communities on a sandy landscape with casuarina trees providing the only needle-shaped bits of shade for the residents. The streets are mostly quiet, aside from the odd motor scooter and kids playing on their own bikes. One of the villages participated in a street art project some years ago and we can see the remnants of that event on some of the houses as we ride through.

We conclude our ride at the inlet of the Thu Bon River, the same waterway on which Hoi An is situated. We then take a wooden boat along the estuary, arriving in this picturesque, world heritage listed town in the best way possible. A few steps off the boat and we are sitting in one of the oldest, well known, family-run restaurants in town looking out over what was a trading port many centuries ago.

Our tour concludes with a drop off to your hotel in Hoi An.