Feb 26: Bad End to a Good Trip

March 2, 2026March 2, 2026 aliceesor3 Comments

Hanoi, Vietnam -> Xiamen, China -> Vancouver, Canada

It’s go day. 😦

We did our last dash packing and said goodbye to Jeannie, who has more travelling ahead.

We flew with Xiamen airways, who did not make a great first impression. They charged us 140 USD for each bike despite having 1 free checked bag a part of our tickets. They were going to charge 195 USD to check the duffle bag (I ended up carrying it on). Despite quoting in USD, they refused to accept payment in USD, and charged in Vietnamese Dong at a conversion rate that incurred another $58 CAD! WTF.

That said, the planes left on time, went to the correct places, and our bikes arrived with us. It could’ve been worse.

The worse surprise was waiting at the very end.

When Flis went to collect the truck from long-term parking, she found it had been broken into, a window was smashed, and a lot of her stuff was stolen.

Ugggghhh. Super annoying, especially since they took some stuff that has no value to anyone but F (e.g. ancient, mucky farm coveralls, homemade baby clothes for a friend, a bagful of non-alcoholic fruit cordials from mom). At least the truck was driveable, and the parking people and police were communicative and kind (although they could not do anything that made the situation materially different).

It is hard to lean into F’s motto for the trip, but it is true that it could definitely have been worse. F was able to drive home, and I was able to bike home.

In thinking over the trip, here’s our review:

What were the highlights of the trip for you?

A: The massage in Muang Mai was so good and so unexpected, I think that’s top, but seeing and interacting with the elephants in Luang Prabang was also pretty amazing.

F: The human company! Gosh we’re amazing. What a fun and goofy triad of silliness!

J: the friendly hellos and high fives from people on the sides of the road , and the hospitality of the Loatian and Vietnamese people, Felicity being chased down hill at mock speed by a goat that had a lot of momentum and was determined to catch the balloons on F’s bike. I laugh out loud every time I think of it. Another highlight was all our laughter 😂 so fun to be silly and entertain/shock local kids with our antics. We also didn’t need our bike locks! How fantastic is that???

What were the lowlights of the trip?

A: Being sick and sick for home while in DBP was rough, as was feeling nauseous and riding through the horrible smells and smoke of burning garbage. The volume of garbage we saw and created, and the truck break-in at the end were also horrible in their special ways.

F: Intestinal parasites! I didn’t know till the day A and I flew out that I was harbouring some cotravelers. Ewwwww!

J: needing to be careful about ingesting unclean water, nasty dusty pit holed roads with big trucks in a few rides in Laos and ATM eating my card, greedy bastard!

What was the most surprising?

A: I didn’t do as much prep for this trip, so there were SO many surprising things… from cultural things like I really didn’t expect that people would be so keen to say hello and want to take pictures of and with us all the time to pure luck things – like we didn’t get any flat tires, and never rode in the rain… but maybe the MOST surprising and unlikely was that a week after our impromptu bike dance party, F and I SAW PARTY BIKE GUY AGAIN in Hanoi. The odds of crossing paths with this guy in another city, of overlapping at all in a city of over 8 million people is mind boggling.

F: #1 surprise= no water buffalo milk! We saw so many beautiful buffalos but apparently milking them is not a thing in this part of the world. SO surprising! #2 surprising thing is how many roadside gardens and improvised planter boxes we saw – almost every usable patch of dirt had something useful planted on it. Very cool. Also on the plants theme, I was super surprised that the plant tails that J and I attached to our bikes survived until the end of the trip. No wonder they use that stuff to make brooms, it’s tough shit!

J: the quietness of Laos, the people and vibe is calm and serene (except for big trucks on the road).

What was your favourite food?

A: There was lots of amazing food (as well as lots of surprising and mysterious food), the good stuff was all the more amazing and appreciated after several days of not being able to stomach much, but the Hanoi Local Beer shop fresh mango passionfruit smoothies were stellar.

F: The Laotian barbecue. If our rig hadn’t been so tippy, it definitely wouldn’t have been as delicious! Seriously though, I really like the social aspect of a meal cooked like that, and it was tasty!

J: the tropical fresh fruits and smoothies! Mango passionfruit for the win!

What was your favourite section of riding?

A: Probably climbing up the Lao side of the pass with the border – sparsely populated, and good hills with decent road surface.

F: The day we opted for small roads through rice fields and small villages in Vietnam

J: it’s hard to choose, I really enjoyed the the ride crossing from Laos into Vietnam. There was a great climb and fun descent , interesting and smooth border crossing, fun snack break in a shaded garden, horrible rough patch but then the completely different culture as we entered into the outside of Dien Bien Phu. It was like rolling into a different era! I also loved our detours into the countryside, riding through rice fields and smaller villages.

What was your most useful / appreciated piece of gear?

A: I gloated about my insulated water bottle (and it’s frigid contents) a lot, but I probably appreciated the travel pillow more – often the pillows were enormous.

F: my value village $11 shoes! No complaints. Also obviously my bike and my smartphone… Everything else is pretty findable if you’ve got those 2 items

J: my bike 😜 and I was very happy to have my little travel speaker to play some “bangers” to get me over the passes.

What did you bring that you didn’t need?

A: A lot actually… I packed the “Alice Palace” tent and a water filter which (along which my sleeping bag and water bladder were never used. The crocs could’ve stayed home, same with the full size gloves and hat.

F: gloves, battery bank, bike lock (which A actually carried), the bike repair kit (I’m not advocating to leave this at home next time, just gloating that we didn’t need it)

J: travel towel, and bike pump!

If you could take something from the culture of Laos or Vietnam to make Canada better, what would it be?

A: From both Laos and Vietnam, I think we could take a dose of the epic work ethic (possibly toned down a bit for sustainability), and definitely the generalized and friendly positivity.

F: What A said. Totally. And also. Kids in Laos and Vietnam seemed to have a lot more freedom, autonomy and responsibilities than kids in Canada generally have, and generally seemed more capable and happier for that. Also I think we need more “dinner and a show” places in Canada – we need noodle man!

J: be more welcoming to people visiting our country and town. This gracious hospitality is something that I feel Canada could return to.

What could you have really done without?

A: All the lowlights. I could’ve done without being a celebrity for the colour of my skin. That felt pretty awkward.

F: all the plastic bottle waste. It’s sensible and energy efficient to have drinkable water separate from washing water, but I wish we’d seen and used more drinking water filling stations rather than purchasing yet more little plastic bottles.

J: the garbage, it’s really in your face. Mystery animal bits in soup form.

Other summary comments on the trip:

J: The riding went well despite a few health hiccups.

F: Too short! I want a long long trip next!

A: Going home is such a mixed bag. I always want more time to travel further where I am as there’s so many things that seem just out of reach, but I do miss drinking tap water and snuggling my cats. I kind of missed camping and pushing my cycling abilities, but this wasn’t the trip for that, so I can look forward to doing that on the other adventures waiting for me at home (albeit on a less grand scale!). And there is the unfortunate reality that I need to pay for the next adventure somehow… (and the next one might not have such affordable mangoes!) I’m really stoked we were able to pull this trip off. We had pretty limited planning, and this was my first time in Asia, and I hadn’t met Jeannie until Luang Prabang, but making up a rough plan a bit at a time and then changing it as needed worked pretty darn well! F & J both take a fun attitude whenever possible and are super awesome travel buddies. If I’m putting a reminder in here for my future self, I’d say – remember to take up the opportunities that present themselves in the moment and trust that what’s unknown about them will work out. Eat lao bbq when it arrives, take a boat up the river when it arrives, and accept the invitation to family dinner when it arrives too.

bye for now – Alice (with remote input from Felicity and Jeannie)

Feb 23-25: Go like Water Buffalo

March 1, 2026March 1, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Tam Coc -> Hanoi

Distance cycled: 6 km
Ave: 12.5 km/h
Max speed: 27.8 km/h

We said we already did the last day of riding, didn’t we? Well, not all things go as planned.

The bus we’d hired through our accommodation to take us and our bikes to Hanoi’s old quarter

dropped us unceremoniously at the edge of Hanoi, leaving us to ride exactly the portion we’d been trying to avoid.

Fortunately, our bikes were still assembled and rideable, so we cycled the rest of the way. It was not without stress – there is a LOT of traffic here, but all things considered, it went quite well.

The trick with traffic here (regardless of whether your vehicle has 4, 2, or 0 wheels) is to engage your inner buffalo:

go at a modest pace, keeping it predictable. You adjust a bit to avoid trajectories of other vehicles, but without any stopping or running. Traffic moves around you, and everybody keeps going.

We had a few days in Hanoi, and we spent most of it walking around the city.

Our first quest was looking for bike boxes. The bike store, who told F they had three boxes for us, turned out to only have very small (like kid sized) boxes.

Measuring another supposedly adult size bike box that seemed quite short.

It took us a while to find Hieu at Bikes Plus who agreed to pack (and in Jeannie’s case, wash – NZ is very strict on biohazard screening) our bikes for a modest price.

We also found a water puppet theatre show and attended a classic production of several folk tales, including people trying to keep a fox away from their ducks, and two phoenixes courting (above).

I didn’t expect the puppeteers to come out in waist deep water at the end of the show!

I went looking for silk, which is produced and woven here. We found Hàng Gai (Silk street) – there were bolts of cloth, and many more shops selling ready-made as well as bespoke clothing. It was cool to see small items made from off cuts and cocoon husks being sold as makeup removers.

On our various quests, we walked by “uncle Ho’s” mausoleum (but were not permitted very close as F had her multitool in her bag, which did not pass the metal detector screening),

various bored-looking guards (obviously dancing would have helped!),

and a complete maze of semi-connected alleys.

Although in one of the temples, we found that our travels may be less safe than they feel!

I discovered that there was swing dancing on our last night, and Dave, a friend from Victoria dance community, just happened to be in Hanoi at the same time, so we all went and were warmly welcomed/jammed.

It was really fun to see so many folks dancing in beautiful áo dàis.

The everlasting quest was, of course, partaking of as many amazing foods and drinks as our guts could manage.

There is a saying here, “the lower the stool, the better the food”, so we tried some street corners and some restaurants.

We also went on a guided food tour with Sam, who introduced us to some tourist classics like train street (above: bizarre that this is a phenomenon at all), and the original bun cha spot (below) as well as some novelties to supplement our own sampling.

We enjoyed:

Bun cha (Perilla leaves in it are colourful and yummy!)

Banana flower salad (okay, papaya salad is better, but it was fun to try!)

Left: Dried eel with fried noodles (surprisingly good)
Right: Hû tiéu trôn – dried mixed rice noodles (top pick)

An epic quantity of delicious Dim sum (a case of we had no idea what we were ordering and it turned out well!)

Roll your own spring rolls (ok, we can make more delicious peanut sauce, but airy fat bubble tubes were fun, and kohlrabi in the slaw was great!)

We did not feel the need to try a second time:

Jelly fruit dessert with beans and ice chips

Coffee here is served strong and small. There are an astounding variety of styles here, and although we did not try them all, we tried quite a few! Pistachio (top right: coffee with pistachio ice cream, so yummy!), coconut, white and milk (both quite sweet and better enjoyed iced as the milk here is usually sweetened condensed milk), egg (top left: super foamy and sweet), and salt (bottom left and right: good both iced and hot!).

I tried scores of mango smoothies, and sometimes, they were great. Other times, they came with balls of jelly in them, or chunks of jelly and ice, which I haven’t yet acquired a taste for.

My favourite was a mango passionfruit smoothie at a local beer stop (no jelly involved).

Perhaps the most memorable food experience was F & J’s Accidental Hotpot Incident. After swing dancing, we went for juice with the local dancers. Dave and I promised to order some drinks for Flis & Jeannie, who as they hadn’t had dinner, went off in search of a quick bite to eat. After chatting for quite some time, and being made fun of for the 6 drinks I had obviously ordered for my imaginary friends, we received a desperate plea from F and J. Could we please help them eat an enormous volume of hot pot? By some baffling sequence of communication, they had been given hot pot ingredients (raw meat, noodles, veggies, mystery chunks, and BROTH) all in plastic bags to go. They declined the generous offer of borrowing the gas stove to cook the bags of dinner and decided to have the unwittingly ordered hot pot right there on the street sitting on very low stools.

Guaranteed to be tasty if eaten on a low stool, right?!

When Dave and I arrived, the restaurateur insisted on dumping all the remaining ingredients into the hot pot that F & J were still struggling to eat (and in many cases, identify!).

Alice (with photos and input, but sadly no more direct supervision from F & J)

Feb 22: Touring Like the Other Tourists Do

February 28, 2026February 28, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Tam Coc – Bich Dong, Hoa Lư

Given that the cycletour part of our trip is over, and given that there are many sites nearby that interested us, we signed up for a guided bus tour for the day. It was nice not have to do any of the logistics – where do we go next, how much time do we spend where, who do you buy the tickets from, and the legwork of arranging transportation from one site to the next.

We were a group of 8 guests: a British couple on a 6-month trip, an American couple on a short break, a solo French woman, and us three.

Nam, our guide for the day, certainly took “legwork” to heart. When we weren’t on the bus, we nearly ran through the sites, following Nam’s raised fist in front of us – in my head, I was calling him SuperNam.

There was an impressive array of insta-opportunities, many of which were in use by Vietnamese people making the most of the last day of Tet holidays.

We learned some interesting things about Vietnam history and culture. Of the current population of 106 million, Nam described 14% as being “hill tribes people” and 86% as “veit people”. Most of the population is Buddhist, but it’s a different variety of Buddhism (Mahāyāna) than Laotian or Thai Buddhism (Theravāda), though of course a lot of the same principles apply. Vietnamese monks do not receive alms, and they are expected to work for their food. Like Laotian monks, they are not allowed alcohol, sex or murder, but Vietnamese monks are also not permitted to consume coffee, tea, or meat.

Nam gave us an impressively concise historical summary of Vietnam as a country.

Some highlights include a queen who maybe poisoned her husband in order to remarry an army general who then became the next king; and the seemingly perpetual struggle against Chinese rulers who have believed and perhaps still believe that Vietnam should be part of China.

Nam also informed us that christianity first arrived in the country not with the French, but earlier, with Catholic Portuguese missionaries. The latin alphabet arrived with the Portuguese, too – before that, written language here used a combination of Chinese characters and original Vietnamese characters. Given the long occupation by the French, the letters stuck. Vietnam is the only country in SE Asia that uses the latin alphabet.

In touristic places like here, english is common, though sometimes the signage is hilarious. We saw a coffeeshop advertising “sourdoug” bread.

Currently, the Vietnamese economy is booming. After the war with USA, recovery was a struggle, but since the communist party instituted economic reforms in the 80’s it has been full steam ahead: privately owned businesses are flourishing as well as state-owned operations. We have seen many V. Electric cars from VinFast, which is the largest privately owned Vietnamese company. A couple of years ago, education up to and including secondary school became free for all students, and the current literacy rate is 90%.

but that was sort of a good thing, because there were fewer tourists about.

First stop, Mua Cave: more famous for its “accessible” viewpoints than its caves

As we were clambering around the Mua Cave site, it was quite clogged with tourists, but that’s nothing compared to the throngs at sunset or what it was like yesterday in the sunshine.

There are 500 uneven and mostly quite giant stairs up to the top lookout.

Accessibility for anyone with mobility issues would not have been possible.

Those little dots on the river down there are boats

The dragon seems to be made of rebar covered with precioussss concrete.

We learned a surprising fact in Hoa Lư: Temples honour humans. Worthy kings and people who did good deeds for their communities.

The ancient Hoa Lư “city”, which was the capital of newly independent Đại Cồ Việt in the 10th century, is an unimpressive scattering of ruins now.

But there are many temples to honour great leaders from the era, especially kings Đinh and Lê (the two who were married to the same queen, Dương Vân Nga) before king Lý moved the capital to Thăng Long (now Hanoi).

In contrast to temples, pagodas honour Buddha. We visited the Bai Dinh pagoda, which encompasses around 1700 acres of land.

We travelled within the pagoda via big yellow electric golf carts.

and many many statues of arhats (enlightened scholars).

There are four special animals – dragons, phoenixes (depicted above), unicorns, and turtles – which are often seen on temples, pagodas, clothing, etc. I don’t know if orchids have any particular significance, but this display of purple ones was particularly amazing.

Today, even foreigners can pay to be a monk here, and you follow a strict schedule of duties and live in on-site accommodations.

Which is the only way we could have heard this epic beast sounding as it is only rung outside tourist visiting hours.

Our tour finished with a stop in Tràng An, which we’d passed by on our bikes on our way into town yesterday.

The boat ride took us through several caves,

And we did team Canada proud by getting into a boat race with another tourboat. Those young Vietnamese men didn’t know what they had signed up for!

The first couple supper restaurants we had tried were closed, but past this small lake we found a nice one.

…with excellent tabletop entertainment while we waited for our food to be ready.

– Felicity (aided and abetted by Alice, with photos from Jeannie)

Feb 21: Last Ride

February 24, 2026February 24, 2026 aliceesor2 Comments

Vũ Lâm, Lạc Sơn District, Hoa Binh -> Tam Coc – Bich Dong, Hoa Lư

Distance cycled: 68 km
Ave: 18.4 km/h
Max speed: 37.8 km/h
Elevation gained: 171 m

As we left Condom Castle in the morning, we discovered their mystery machine is an ice machine! So cool! Ha!

We returned for more delicious phò for breakfast, and we were flattered by being treated like regulars.

Today was our last riding day, which was bittersweet.

We stayed on the busy highway to get the first 30km behind us, then switched off on a more direct secondary road for the second half.

We found amazingly good roads with nobody on them,

and a cool, weirdly mobile floating concrete toll bridge.

There were mausoleums dotted all over the rice fields… it seems strange given the challenges of making a foundation within the regularly flooded paddies, but evidently they’ve got a system that works.

Classic instance of Vietnamese guy videoing us as we rode by.

In the afternoon, we stopped and climbed into a mausoleum where we were hiding to stay away from people who might talk to us while we ate a pomelo.

Before F could even get the rind off, a woman came over and talked persistently to F about skin whitening products and asking how to become a pale as F.

This region boasts many dishes that feature goat meat. Luckily this troupe looks like dairy gals.

As we neared Tràng An and Tam Coc, which are cute little towns with amazing limestone hills walling them in,

we found ALL THE OTHER TOURISTS. The roads were jammed,

and the waterway itself looked like you could walk across it there were so many tour boats. The last hour was highly defensive riding, mostly as people on 2-wheelers don’t seem to check if there’s room before pulling into the stream of traffic.

and went for celebratory croissants, brownies,

pizza and beer, all of which were stellar.

Alice (and F & J editing Ltd)

Feb 20: Another Valley, Another Volley

February 23, 2026February 23, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Chiềng Châu, Mai Châu District -> Vũ Lâm, Lạc Sơn District, Hoa Binh

Distance cycled: 75.8 km
Ave: 16.9 km/h
Max speed: 60.7 km/h
Elevation gained: 753 m (in the first 35km – elevation stopped recording after that, Ride with GPS predicted 1079m for our route)

F & J found a local volleyball game to cheer for.

Thanks to the loudspeaker, we could hear the commentary for much longer than you’d expect as the road to climb the hill doubled back so we were only a few hundred meters away, albeit vertically.

As we climbed, we found all the traffic that has been absent the last few days.

The views kept getting better and better, but the traffic was relentless and there was nowhere to pull over.

I was happy to find an established viewpoint cafe. (Spot cyclists you know)

J tried Yogurt coffee (thick and creamy) and F tried cheese coffee (salty and foamy).

The traffic slowed to an uphill bicycle crawl (or rather some of it did, and the rest of it should have!) as we navigated a construction zone with rough surface. (Again, spot cyclists you know)

On the way down the other side of the pass, we found a slew of bbqs with people cooking corn, sticky rice (in Bamboo tubes with corn butt plugs), eggs in the fire, meat skewers, and sausages.

No idea why this high concentration only existed on the one side of the pass

After zooming down into the next valley, we got fresh roadside strawberries and the most disappointing mango.
Among other changes, local women’s hair is no longer consistently up in a top bun with bun cover (we can tell because even with helmet on, the helmet ended up perched on top, protecting the hairdo instead of the head!)

and try the google walking route, which although slower and bumpier,

There should be a word for the layering of overlapping misty mountains. (Suggestions welcome – we feel English needs a word for this!)

We found an all women volleyball game and enjoyed watching until a bunch of drunk guys showed up and started obnoxiously trying to get us to play as well.

Once again, we were getting hellos from many children and adults, hands out for highfives, although compared to the gentler hellos of Laos, a bunch of the hellos here sound more assertive, like the tone of someone yelling after you that you dropped your hat. My energy for cheerful helloing back was running low, and after we rode past yet more volleyball, we headed back to the main road, thinking we’d be less interesting there.

At this beautiful juncture, we realized we were soon going to run out of daylight and decided to look for beds and dinner.

Accommodation was really thin on the ground, but we found one little hotel with a very cheerful owner. She asked us if we wanted to stay the whole night, and initially offered us a room with only one bed. We had to leave our shoes at the entry, and climb the three floors to our 2 bed room using borrowed sandals.

The sandal rule was not a reflection on the epic cleanliness of the rooms, though, as ours came with a bustier lurking in the bathroom and a partially used package of condoms on the nightstand. It did win top marks for functional shower, best of the trip so far.

And it had the added allure of a mysterious machine downstairs.

I was actually feeling hungry, which was still novel enough to be exciting, only equalled by the excitement of finding top tier phò a few doors down.

Alice and Flis, the pedantasaurus, with proofreading by Jeannie

P.S. Re animal encounters:
We’ve seen many cows on the side of the road

and lots of well-behaved, chill dogs and puppies

including one today trying to figure out how to hump an older dog.
There are chickens loose everywhere.

We spent a silly amount of time watching a mama hen guide 6 tiny chicks around the treacherous terrain of a gas station. They can’t have been more than a couple days old because they were still entirely fluffy, no feathers yet. One fell down into a drainage grate, and we panicked. Amazingly, it hopped out again. Shortly after that, though, the mamma accidentally kicked one into a plastic bag and then stomped all over it. But by the time we dragged ourselves away from that particular chicken drama, all chicks were free and safe.

Chickens are on the busiest roads, and I’ve only seen a couple of roadkills. Jeannie played chicken with a chicken, who at the last barely dodged with a lot of squacking from both parties.

There have also been many goats. A highlight was coming down from Pha Din pass, a nanny goat absolutely barreling down the speeding bicycle lane, going faster that it seemed possible for a goat to go, but staying right in the center of the lane as F and J whizzed by.

A

Feb 19: Fast Forward

February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Son La -> Chiềng Châu, Mai Châu District

Distance cycled: 13.5 km
Ave: 18.1 km/h
Max speed: 45.7 km/h
Elevation gained: 97 m

We spent most of last night trying to figure out where we want to go for the next (last!) week, and how plausible it was to find a boat on the Song Da (black river) that might take us down to Hoa Dinh.
In the end, we concluded that it was an uncommon request, and may have been really cool if arranged with more notice, and not during the holidays.
So we cycled south towards the bus station with an idea of skipping ahead a bit. We were aiming for the Mai Chau district, but didn’t have a clear plan in mind.

We rolled up at the bus station and were immediately ushered to load onto a bus heading for Mai Châu in 6 minutes. We carefully put our bikes in stowage below, doffed our shoes to enter the bus, and climbed aboard.

Aboard turned out to be two tiers of race car recliner bunks that did requiring some climbing as we were instructed to take top bunks.

It was surprisingly comfortable once we got used to the almost horizontal positioning.

Our bikes were amazingly unscathed despite being restowed with a press of other luggage so tightly that the three bikes had to be extracted as a single unit and separated after. Everything retrieved, we rolled down into the valley of rice fields.

We found a basic little hotel after our pinned homestay was still in holiday mode.

We walked out to a delightful dinner, including chicken curry, braised eggplant with tofu, and caramelized pork shoulder.

And glutenous rice cooked in banana leaves that you eat dipping it in a delicious sesame salt mixture.

Finally, as of this evening, my gastro system seems to be settling down. I enjoyed the delightful dinner tonight AND had no knock-on misery, unlike meals of the past few days. Huzzah!

Alice

Feb 17-18: Lead Legs to Luxury

February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 aliceesorLeave a comment

Thuận Châu -> Son La

Distance cycled: 34.5 km
Ave: 16.4 km/h
Max speed: 56.2 km/h
Elevation gained: 396 m

On a day after a big day, the legs were like lead.

We struggled to find a spot to eat our breakfast. Where are the public parks and squares when you need them?

The riding was pretty… and we went pretty slow.

The soil looks rich, but dealing with the limestone seems rough.

We were happy to have pre-booked ourselves 2 nights at a luxurious hotel with a restaurant and pool.

The hotel staff carried our panniers in for us on one of those little rolling carts, and they assured us the restaurant is open, even though it is Tet holiday.

We showered off the sweat and switched to sloth mode.

Lounging by the pool was less slothful than expected… I skimmed the floaters out of the pool while Jeannie and Flis hauled chairs out from the changing room.

The views were grand, and it was deserted and delightful.

We said a prayer of thanks for the hotel restaurant.

In the morning, after breakfast buffet, we took turns occupying the toilet until everyone felt reliable enough to go exploring.

We visited the local museum, which covered from 30,000 yrs ago to the 1970’s. We used Google translate to read about the communist government’s relocation of “lowland” Vietnamese into the the apparently untapped (and quite inhospitable) mountains of this region, instructing them to create arable land and produce food for the nation. Basically … Stealing land from indigenous people to “make it more productive”. There is an echo of this government-mandated migration recently, as the Da river was dammed in the early 2000’s, forcing more than 100,000 people to relocate.

We drank some fresh-squeezed sugar cane juice and fresh coconut water, and then I tried to machete the husk open but wound up accepting help when it was taking too long and everyone was watching.

It is common to see styrofoam freezer boxes reused as planters

We carried on to an absolutely jampacked temple (seems like many people visit specifically on new year’s day).

And watched as folks left offerings, bought lucky salt, lit incense and made prayers for good health, luck and prosperity in the new year. We found a much less busy alter at which to leave our own offerings.

Up about a million stairs from the temple, there was a cave, so we clambered around in there for a while.

Classic limestone features with lots of evidence of human interference.

We also bought some lucky salt. Which I hope will protect us from any pursuing cave-monsters.

Walking back towards our hotel, we stopped to ask a young man operating a massage gun a question, which escalated quickly when his father rolled up on a swish racing bicycle.

They explained that they’d once cycled the length of Vietnam together in 14 days and proceeded to bring out the dad’s bedazzled travelling bike…

… complete with rings, necklaces, a watch, leather saddle bags, and colourful flashing lights. There is bling EVERYWHERE. There are a total of 10 wine-bottle-sized speakers attached to this bike, and they were soon blasting a Vietnamese rendition of “Hotel California”.

We were swept into a ridiculous dancing-on-the-sidewalk party.

After a while, we noticed that the uniformed, armed (with assault rifles!) guards in the gatehouse across the street were watching, then videoing, and then dancing on the street in front of the gatehouse, too. I saw them doing something like the cha cha together!

A & F with input from J

Feb 16: Pha Din Pass

February 19, 2026February 19, 2026 aliceesor2 Comments

Mường Ảng -> Thuận Châu

Distance cycled: 86 km
Ave: 16.6 km/h
Max speed: 64.9 km/h
Elevation gained: 1431m

Are you sure you want to leave the Mường Ảng hotel this early in the morning?

After the first 40km, for which we averaged 19km/h, we started climbing this beast of a hill, which just went on and on and on.

My queasiness didn’t appreciate all the smells of roadside burning (strong stench of chemical garbage, as well as the much less repugnant cooking fire smoke) coming along the flats, so while the others stopped for coffee and snack, I found some relief continuing to climb higher where the air was fresher.

We are not the only people on pedal bikes, but other cyclists are rare.

Scenic rice patties all over the place… it is quite the feat of water management engineering.

It would probably have been a bit easier going if we hadn’t had those really strong coffees at 5pm last night. None of us slept well or long. Also, I hadn’t bothered to eat dinner, and my breakfast was half a bowl of noodle soup (I passed the beef to F).

After 10km of climbing, I was pulling over every 200m to rest.

After 2.7km of that, I parked at a small restaurant, ordered cold water and then lay down on the dirty wooden floor. The proprietor was a friendly guy, who had seen other travelling cyclists, and he didn’t mind. The handful of other patrons seemed perplexed.

When F & J joined me, we shared 2 bowls of what the translation app only helped us identify as ethnic minority specialty phò. Our best guess is organ meat.

After declining the owner’s invitation to stay and celebrate New Years Eve singing karaoke with him, we continued on.

Nobody was tempted to stop and do opioids on the way to the summit.

Top of the pass – the patriotic language is prevalent.

At the top of the pass, a man insisted on selling us celebratory balloons. He was obviously not a cyclist as he was also committed to tying them to the handlebars despite our attempts to redirect.

Once out of view, we revised the balloon positioning before barreling downhill.

We weren’t sure if we were going to make it to our planned hotel, but the last 15km were a delightful coasting grade.

We were bouyed up by much roadside encouragement (I think people liked the balloons, 4 of which had survived the descent – F went downhill so fast, she busted both of hers :p)

In the hotel lobby, we had the good fortune to bump into Bao, a Vietnamese man who lives in Edmonton and recognized us as Canadian thanks to Jeannie’s riding jersey. He helped us find the hotel operator, and pointed out that it was NYE and we wouldn’t be able to get food anywhere tonight or tomorrow. His solution was to invite us to his family dinner. It was his wife’s family; he and their 14-y-o daughter were staying at the hotel because the Edmonton raised daughter couldn’t handle the family bathroom situation. Bao had a lot of interesting observations about cultural differences and trends between Vietnam and Canada. His dad, 94, still travels back and forth between Edmonton and Vietnam every year on his own. He worked as a heavy duty mechanic and joked that he was getting a great deal out of the CPP as he’s now been getting pension for longer than he’d worked!

We shared a delightful feast, and were sent home with a chung cake for sustenance tomorrow. Cảm ơn! (thank you!)

We pulled together the dregs of our energy reserves to stay up and go out to watch the lunar NYE fireworks.

This turned out to be a whole overwhelming and festive sensory experience with crowds of people.

More people than I had thought possible in this smallish town. (Spot Jeannie if you can!)

There was music and dance performance clashing with the beat of rhythmic drumming.

We were quite literally pulled into collective dancing and whooping around a bonfire, and were urged at midnight to slurp from urns of mystery alcohol with cummunal straws.

(Urn with straws visible behind the bonfire) The promised fireworks were an epic 20-minute production.

A record number of people wanted to take selfies, etc… it was like being a fake celebrity at a celebration we knew nothing about.

Alice (with the usual input and photos from the usual suspects)

Feb 15: With Our Tails Between Our Legs

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Dien Bien Phu -> Mường Ảng

Distance cycled: 40.6 km
Ave: 14.4 km/h
Max speed: 61.3 km/h
Elevation gained: 692m

We got our butts kicked leaving Dien Bien Phu. Maybe that’s DDP’s super power. Kicking out colonialism-privileged white people…

It was a struggle day.

We found a vegetarian restaurant for breakfast, but we didn’t eat until brunch time, so we started riding at 12:30pm, in the heat of the day.

We were all, variously, not feeling tops.

We took lots of breaks, including one with a family who was keen to mother us.

We eventually made it to the top of today’s pass and enjoyed the best coffee and juice with a view before descending in the dusk.

A 19-year-old soldier on holiday who was eager to practice his English helped us find a potential hotel option, but it was rather unclean, so we were all glad we pursued our original planned accommodations.

Beds here are consistently hard. The softest and most comfortable was in our luxury riverside stay in Nong Khiaw, and that was still much harder than any mattress I’ve had at home. The last few nights I’ve resorted to putting my air mattress on top of the bed.

Tonight, the beds are hard enough that F & J are joining in.

A (& F & J)

PS.

Tomorrow is New Years Eve! Everyone is bringing home trees for prosperity in the new year. (And some chickens bottom right)

These are by no means the only chickens or animals we’ve seen on 2-wheeled transport. But these chickens’ likely fate was to be plucked and boiled whole, then propped up featherless and shiny with their beaks pointing skyward on an altar ready for NYE midnight prayers

Feb 14: Unintended City Day

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 aliceesor1 Comment

Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam

Alice was out of commission for most of our time here, so Jeannie and I were unsupervised.

It started out well. We became TikTok stars at a local coffee shop. Our new friend, Tuoi, and the shop proprietor were insanely enthusiastic about getting photos and videos with us.

Tuoi’s selfie with Jeannie, just in case you didn’t recognize her.

We then went and collected Alice and went in search of breakfast.

…. Selling all sorts of fruit… including these “Buddha hands fruit”, which are apparently mostly used as decoration and for their fragrance.

We found many roadside shops selling peach blossom trees, kumquat trees (both essential lunar new years decor items)…

… as well as lillies, and other elaborate new years decorations.

We were admiring a fish pond that had a potted bonsai tree growing out of it when the homeowner saw us and insisted that we should come and see his indoor plants…

It was past 2pm and desperately hot by the time we found a food truck selling cheese-filled pancakes. A couple of those gave us the mental energy to split ways – Alice to the history museum, and Jeannie and I off seeking a google listing of Korean fried chicken in a mall.

We did find the fried chicken place – very much a McDonald’s vibe, and the most common order seemed to be absolutely disgusting-looking spaghetti.

But the air-conditioning was wonderful and we gained some local intel. A youth sitting close to us gave advice on where we might find proper food, an ATM, and a toilet, and he pinged these necessities out our map.

We found an ATM. It ate Jeannie’s visa card. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a miracle card-retrieval process here like there was in Luang Prabang. What fucking luck.

We then found a place offering massage, so we committed to 90 min massages.With really limited communication we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. Jeannie got the extra hot essential oil spicy skin version. I got a non-spicy version with plastic gloves on, which was rather strange but still enjoyable.

The massage ladies tried to upsell us relaxing hair washes as well, but we declined.

We find ourselves surprisingly conspicuous in this city. Kids as well as adults wave and say hello as we walk down the street. One fellow stopped us on the sidewalk to point out where we should go to see the local military historical monuments. Using google translate, he asked where we were from and how old we were… he guessed I was 50… The conversation didn’t go much further than that.

This lady was running a fruit juice stall. A very energetic retired banker, she was keen to chat; deemed us as champions, palpated our muscles, and encouraged us to palate her lack of muscles.

Back at the hotel, Alice was doing great work on recuperation sleep, so J and I brought our “Banh Chung” new years cake down to the hotel reception to ask our hosts how to eat it. We’re glad we asked. There’s a specific way to unwrap the banana leaf packaging, and you cut it using the strings that had been holding it together. Our hosts also brought us a dish of shredded dried chicken and a wee dish of fish sauce (to my horror!).

These additions (I admit) made the pale green coloured gooey rice cake far tastier – J remarked that without those additions, it was a pretty labour-intensive treat with a rather bland flavour.

The best part of our tet cake celebration was the audiovisual accompaniment. Vietnamese youth who’s got talent singing and dancing… Often in military costumes and with fake rifles. And then a most dramatic patriotic music video interpretation of war. A love story about a fallen soldier and a young mother whose child would never meet his father. The soldier left behind only a love letter and hard won victory. This video was on repeat for a while… We struggled to look away.

– Felicity (with input from Jeannie)

PS from Alice:

As F reports, I spent most of our time in DDP at our guesthouse.

I did (out of sheer stubbornness, I think) visit the museum, but my main takeaway was that the benches are too far apart from each other, and not well located for looking at the exhibits.

… and the underdog Vietnamese are proud of defeating the colonial French in 1953-4.

“Influence of the Dien Bien Phu victory in 1954 on the national liberation movements in Asian, African, and Latin American countries”

I have much more to say about local bathroom fashions:

Toilet paper universally goes in a garbage basket beside the toilet.

Sometimes there’s even stricter rules, although this leaves me wondering where *are* poops supposed to go!?

In most cases, the shower is “loose” in the bathroom, with the whole bathroom sharing a common drain. In a few cases, the sink plumbing only goes as far as the main drain. Often there is a sprayer hose beside the toilet.
The upsides are that you can easily spray clean the whole bathroom, and the toilet sprayer does away with the need for the disgusting toilet brush often found in our home bathrooms.
Downsides are that you need to remember to remove the toilet paper and waste basket before showering, otherwise future you (and your travel mates) will be sad. Also, when you shower, you inevitably cover the entire floor and the toilet with water. I think this is why plastic sandals are often available, but if you’re dashing in there in a hurry, I can attest you might not have time or wherewithal to don appropriate footwear!

Happy Valentine’s, by the way. It’s a dangerous day for bike touring – this time last year was appendix day, which I’m in 99% sure is *not* what’s wrong with me. There’s nothing like being sick to make me sick for home and my own bed, but the misery is mitigated by compassionate travel companions. Would recommend F & J.

BC by Cycle

Jasper to Victoria – Solo Ride

Author: aliceesor