Day 1 & 2

Arrival in Hanoi
Our trip to our first hostel was surprisingly easy, we landed in Hanoi on time, then had a relatively straight forward time through customs. After clearing customs, we walked into baggage collection saw our 4 bike boxes looking relatively unscathed, soon after our bags followed up. Having collected our bags, we walked into the lounge to a see a man holding up a ‘Sam Wilson’ sign, then followed a short trip into the centre of Hanoi.

Having arrived at our hostel after, a brief moment to relax and collect our thoughts we began to assemble our bikes. As there was not enough room inside the hostel we were forced to put our bikes up outside in the heat of the day. With a few hiccups and confusions here and there, our bikes were up, and ready to cycle..... As the photos show, this was a baptism of fire into the heat of northern Vietnam as all of our clothes were soaked through, and we ended up creating a puddle of sweat. George, in particular, struggled with the heat - his shorts going from a bright green, to sweat ridden dark green.  -(Jamie)

Day 1 of cycling followed after a ropey nights sleep caused by our fellow room mates coming in at 3am and one snoring like a beast!  We started late around 12.30pm after our DHL support van arrived and we got everything on board and drove to the start point in Bac Giang. The heat was immense at a ‘comfortable’ 40 degrees!! We hastily changed on road side to the amusement of onlookers. The 65km ride was tough in the midday heat. The DHL van driver was brilliant buying water for us and scouting the route ahead and securing a hotel for us in our stop at Dong Treiu. We were pretty drained once we’d finished as the heat and lack of proper food had taken its toll, yet Sam still managed to say hello to everyone along the route. There were not many places to buy food so we stocked up on bread which was lunch, dinner and breakfast... yum. 

Day 2 was better as we started at 7am and it was raining! This was a God send as it lowered the heat to 28 degrees and was refreshing, which noticeably increased our speed to an average of 25km an hour. The roads were better than expected although the driving is hectic, with very little rules and A LOT of horn usage. The scenery is already stunning with luckily a lot of flat cycling so far. During the 70km day we had one broken bike fixed, 2 falls and another broken bike right at the finish line! Meaning we had to drive to a city and get it fixed. -(Callum)