Bicycle Touring Vietnam

Bicycle Touring SE Asia – The Start

It’s funny how one simple idea can change your life forever.

It all started when I decided I needed a vacation. I wanted to travel somewhere new, I wanted it to be adventurous, and keeping with the AgeHigh philosophy, I wanted it to be challenging. For months I stared at Google Maps. Finally, I decided on Southeast Asia. It’s exotic, cheap, and the food is arguably the best in the world. Now all I needed was an activity.

I cannot sit still. The idea of relaxing on a beach with hundreds of other pink bodied tourists horrifies me. The thought of bouncing from town to town and mixing with the backpacking crowd makes me ill. I had to do something physical and off the beaten path. I started researching my usual adventure sports. I looked for Southeast Asia surf destinations and long distance hiking trails. I found nothing interesting.

Then one day it hit me. I could do a bicycle tour! Do people do that? I don’t know. I thought I heard of it and began poking around the internet. Sure enough, turns out bicycle touring is a thing. And the more I learned, the more convinced I was that traveling by bicycle could be the most awesome thing ever. What’s not to love? It involves equipment which is perfect for a gearhead like me, it’s physical, and to say it’s culturally immersive is an understatement. I was all in and I didn’t even have a bike yet.

Buying a Touring Bicycle

My Surly Ogre

It had been over 20 years since I owned a bike that wasn’t a single speed beach cruiser. When I began looking for a touring bike for my trip, I was instantly overwhelmed. Bikes are still beautifully simple machines, but there have been changes, such as disc brakes, tubeless tires, Rohloff hubs, dynamo hubs, and carbon fiber everything. Where do I start? I took to the forums and determined with the type of bike touring I planned to do; a steel frame bike was the way to go. I narrowed it down to a few models and started searching Craigslist. I found a Surly Ogre for sale and picked it up for a $1,000. In hindsight, it was dumb luck that I ended up with what I now believe to be one of the best touring bikes ever made.

I brought the bicycle home, and before doing anything else, I took her out for a 50-mile ride. Fifty miles was by far the longest distance I had ever pedaled a bike. However, I didn’t find the effort too strenuous. I was already in above average shape. I’m an avid runner with a few ultras under my belt, including a 100-miler.

Cycling Hanoi to Bangkok

Now that I had an idea of what I was capable of, I booked my trip. I found a multi-city ticket with Korean Air flying from Melbourne, Florida to Hanoi, Vietnam. The return flight was a month later leaving from Bangkok, Thailand. Given my timeframe, Hanoi to Bangkok seemed like a very doable distance. I looked at a few possible routes between the two cities but decided to leave my options open and play it by ear.

The only real issue I uncovered with my Surly Ogre during my 50-mile ride was the length of the handlebar stem. It seemed long for me at 120mm, so I switched it out for an 80mm Thompson. I also replaced the 2.35″ Schwalbe Big Apple tires for tubeless 2″ Schwalbe Marathon Almotion tires.

Mechanically the bike was ready to go; now I needed to add racks and bags to carry all my precious gear and clothes.

Outfitting the bike turned out to be a much more significant expense then I had anticipated. I decided against the classic bike touring arrangement and went with a more modern bikepacking setup.

Here’s a list of what I finally settled on.

• Revelate/Surly Framepack
• Revelate Moutain Feedbag
• Revelate Gas Tank
• Revelate Sweetroll Large
• Blackburn Outpost Seatpack/Drybag
• Surly Rear Rack
• Salsa Anything Cage and Bag x2
• In Hanoi, I determined I would need more storage, so I purchased a couple of North Face shoulder bags and modified them into mini-panniers.

As far as I could tell I was good to go. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

For the next couple of months, I continued my usual running routine and mixed in a few longish rides. When I left, I felt slightly undertrained for cycling, but I was very confident in my ability to suffer. Worst-case scenario I would get in shape along the way.

After arriving in Hanoi, I checked into a room in the Old Quarter for three nights. I would use the time to explore the city, adjust to the time change and put my bike back together after being boxed for the flight to Vietnam.