So our last day of cycling in Vietnam ends today and we are tasked with doing 80Km by lunchtime. We start of by cycling alongside the river which nobody seems to get bored with as what is very apparent is that the waterways are the mainstay of transportation for what is very much a cottage industry in this country from flowers, to fruit, to rice, vegetables and today the section of the river we went down was where they were making bricks. Incredibly fascinating s...

The mornings are getting earlier,down for breakfast at 0600 and then a walk down to the river where we are taken by boat up river for around 30 minutes to visit the floating market, what a site. I can only describe it as an Armada of vessels ranging in size carrying anything from cold drinks to lottery tickets to fruit and veg. Initially most people muted -why on earth do we want to visit a floating market at that un-godly hour, this I hasten to add was short liv...

Day 2 of riding begins with a breakfast from 0630am and it was quite funny to see so many people eating baguette and jam just so they could put some fuel in the belly because nobody really fancied a curry or a dim sum type of item at that time of the morning, mainly because most people morning ablutions have been thrown into turmoil and there has been many a story told over the last two days about various men's digestive systems some of it in too much graphic det...

730am and we are off! So the months of training, or not as the case may be, will be put into practice. Onto the coach and then a 2 hour drive to where we start our adventure, but not without incident I hasten to add. One hour into the drive and coach number one gets a blowout according to our guide who receives a phone call from the guide in coach 1. The general consensus from coach 2 is b***** them and leave them on the hard shoulder to fry, but of course empat...

Well we have arrived in Vietnam safely after a 11 hour flight from Heathrow to Bangkok and then an hours wait to then jump on another flight to Ho Chi Ming. once touching down we then went straight to the bicycle shop to get measured and fitted for our bikes. to say it was like a bike surgery would be an understatement, everyone had their own favourite bike item that they had brought with them to have it fitted, ranging from hand grips to SPD's (not a transmitte...