VV - HK BESPOKE

Danang Arrival

With a 17:00 arrival time for most, the focus will be on an easy airport to hotel transfer and a relaxed dinner with time to build bikes.

The Danang airport is around 20 minutes from the hotel.

We will dine close by to keep things simple.

Ride 1: To the hills

140km | 1,000m | Strava file

This relatively easy ride to kick the tour off starts with some flat riding. We will roll from Danang to the beautiful UNESCO town of Hoi An where we’ll have a quick, early coffee stop. About 40km from Hoi An the countryside begins.  From this point, you’ll have left modern Vietnam behind and you won’t be seeing it again until you reach Hue at the end of day three! 

The scenery on the last half of today’s ride is beautiful. The final 20km provide a few uphill challenges that the climbers among the group will enjoy - indeed, some of the top riders on the segments out here are still the Project 852 riders from 2016! We stop for the night in a backwater town. Kham Duc saw a large battle in the war and you can still see the airstrip not far from the hotel. It also has a colourful past as a gold mining area. 

We have simple but clean lodgings for the night and we will dine on local food at a traditional eatery nearby.

Ride 2: Kham Duc - Tay Giang

156km | 2,500m | Strava File

Today’s ride is a stunner. It packs plenty of climbing, but the gradients are generally around 5%. The hills, while long, are therefore not killers. The ride to lunch at 60km is the easiest section, rolling alongside a beautiful river. It’s worth taking this part easy to save the legs for the climbs to come. 

After the break we will take on the 8km Climb from Thanh My (P852’s Ed is still KOM!) before an awesome 8km descent. The next 11km climb (also still Ed’s from 2017!) takes us into extremely beautiful jungle territory. 

We’ll pit stop in a small town of Prao before a favourite road section leads us to the turn off to truly back of beyond territory and our base for the night, Tay Giang. Very, very few tourists make it out here. It is close to the border with Laos and the only accommodation out here big enough for our group is a very simple government guesthouse. Nearby a friend of Velo Vietnam, Pai, has set up a small homestay, so we may make it over there for some food if Tet (Lunar New Year) allows. 

Tay Giang is Vietnam’s least populous district and here the population is 98% Khatu, making it also the “least Vietnamese” district in the nation.

Ride 3: Tay Giang - Hue

156km | 2,400m | Strava File

Today we head onto one of the most remote feeling roads in all of Vietnam.

We’ll ride a long section which has no shops or even houses on it as we climb high on the Ho Chi Minh Road into deep, pristine jungle territory. 

After the main serving of climbs we will enjoy a (mostly) flat ride to our lunch break at 95km. 

Next up is another awesome descent before our ride back into civilization via a series of small villages and a couple of smaller climbs and finally into the ancient riverside city of Hue. 

Your hotel tonight will be an upgrade on the previous two more remote nights and we will head out for dinner in a good Vietnamese restaurant.