If you can see Mt. Baker, you are part of The Experience
Originally published December 5, 2025 on Dale’s substack, Afflatus
I am sitting on the cafe terrace. My ample buttocks lavishly overhang the extremities of the tiny concrete stool: outdoor furniture for the apocalypse. Facing me across the matching concrete table, sits my would-be next ex-boss. The amplitude of his derrière threatens to eclipse any empirical evidence his stool exists at all. I think of Bertrand Russell.
It is not yet 9 o’clock in the morning but this is Saigon so I’m already perspiring like a Magaluf meth head.
Our negotiation continues.
“You can have 20 days of holiday per year but you must take 10 of those at the end of June.” I protest at this estival imposition, citing a shaggy-dog devotion to “Christmas with the family” but to no effect. I reluctantly accept his proviso and immediately start thinking about the epic 10-day cycling expedition that will fill this midsummer void.
Having already completed many of Vietnam’s great cycling challenges, including Saigon to Hanoi, Hanoi to Saigon, The Ha Giang Loop, the Extreme Northeast, the even more Extreme Northwest and sundry other forays up, down and around this enchanted land, coming up with a suitable encore will not be easy.
The search begins.
And then, one lazy afternoon, as I’m idly perusing the latest estimable offerings from vietnamcoracle.com – my go-to resource for cycling inspiration – I find my answer: the Trans-Northern Belt Road.
I melt into the intoxicating description on my screen of the 582-mile route:
“Traversing the breadth of Vietnam from east to west at its widest and most mountainous point, the Trans-Northern Belt Road (Đường Vành Đai Phía Bắc) is an historic route and the third longest road in the nation, measuring 937km. The road passes through 10 northern provinces and some of the most spectacular landscapes and complex terrain in the country.”
In this moment it is decided.
I book my flight north and immediately switch to drinking skimmed milk, as I will need to be in peak physical condition for this arduous undertaking. Such attention to detail, however, is no match for the whims and caprices of Mother Nature. And so it is that four days before my departure for Ha Long Bay – the starting point of my tour – Wipha, a typhoon-cum-tropical storm slams into Vietnam, precisely at Ha Long Bay, before rolling west, wreaking havoc and destruction along, as luck would have it, the Trans-Northern Belt Road. With all access to Ha Long suspended by winds of up to 62 miles per hour, I delay my flight and go and buy a loaf of bread.
My Vietjet Air flight finally lands in Ha Long Bay, four days behind schedule, which for Vietjet, is actually quite commendable. We hit the tarmac and some Ryanair frequent flyers at the back clap like we’re coming home on Apollo 13. I make my way through a persistent rain to my Airbnb, where I assemble my bicycle, scarf some chicken rice and hit the sack, ready to set off on my mini-odyssey across the puodgy part of Vietnam.
What follows are my daily diary entries along the way.
Day 1: Ha Long Bay to Dong Mo
Lingering rain
It’s raining cats and dogs as I leave the Airbnb. First order of business is to deposit my bike case at a post office and have it sent on to Hanoi. This small task takes nearly two hours to accomplish, as all the post offices I visit are either closed, lacking the requisite enthusiasm to participate in my venture or upset that I am turning their floor into a duck pond. Finally, though, it is done and I set off.
Wipha’s winds may have dissipated but its rains still linger. The terrain is flat and cold so I push hard to keep warm and get it over with. I head northwest to the small town of Dong Mo, where I find a cafe with air-conditioning so cold my nipples receive a light dusting of snow.
Day 2: Dong Mo to Bac Kan
‘A cyclist’s feast’
I wake up with early-stage rigor mortis. Only my eyebrows and groin seem to be operating as God intended. An attempt at yoga yields only modest gains. Good enough, though, to swing a leg over the saddle and set out into the morning damp.
Within 60 seconds of departing my hotel-cum-wedding venue, I am scaling the Mur de Dong Mo, a wall so steep, even the goats are zigzagging. I toil and sweat and dream of the steaming bowl of pho that awaits me in the adjoining valley.
Fed and fueled for the morning’s exertions, I set about tackling the relentless series of climbs that stand between me and lunch. The weather, once the sun rises above the dense flora, becomes stupefyingly hot. This, together with intermittent showers, left behind by Wipha, turn the air thick and humid; like breathing steam from a kettle.
Seventy-five miles later, my Plasticine legs have melted to jelly and my face glows crimson like shame. Time for lunch. A cyclist’s feast of eggs, vegetables, rice, soup, iced tea and some invisible chicken.
After lunch, I drink some coffee-flavored sugar and begin to ponder the big decision that I will have to make before long. Do I keep riding along on this mountain road in the wake of this great and devastating storm, where the risk of landslides and blocked mountain roads is high, or do I turn north, out of the path of Wipha and up into the picturesque but touristed mountains of Ha Giang province?
The moment when I shall have to make this choice remains up the road so for now I press on, making a small detour to Bac Kan, a town so bereft of tourism, the hoteliers are practically snatching weary cyclists off the streets. There, I sleep like the dead, anaesthetized to the sunburn that heats the room like a roaring log fire.
Tomorrow, we ride.
Day 3: Bac Kan to Na Hang
A big, burning, beautiful day in the mountains
As is often the case with long solo rides, it takes me a couple of days to make the mental adjustment from chasing to touring. Today, the transition washes over me like a cool mist. No more chasing numbers, stamping on pedals and fighting the bike. Just the easy rhythm of my breathing and spinning through this enchanting landscape.
So relaxed do I become, in fact, that I forget to stop for lunch and so end up completing the day’s ride fueled by nothing more than a bowl of chicken noodles. Ninety-three miles and nearly two2 miles of climbing powered by pho ga. ¡Comida de campeones!
Ten minutes after finishing the ride, I pass out.
Today’s route has led me through some truly spectacular terrain. Thick, lush forest canopy, hot with steam from the unrelenting sun. The climbs, while rarely long, were steep and surly and came one after another, like buses with the wrong number.
One of the lasting impressions I have from the first three days of this little tour is of the joy and friendliness of the people in these parts – not only the children but the old people too. Shopkeepers, laborers from the fields or just random folk, bemused to see a mad, red-faced foreigner, riding his bicycle in the midday sun. All so welcoming and talkative and kind, as they pinch the tires and lift my bike high into the air like a race-winning victory salute.
Tomorrow I will reach the small town of Viet Quang, where I must decide whether to head north to Ha Giang or continue west along this amazing route, the Trans-Northern Belt Road. Perhaps the answer will come to me in my dreams.
For tomorrow, we ride!
Day 4: Na Hang to Pho Rang
Judgment day
The day begins as it always does on these tours, with a five o’clock alarm followed by a 20-minute stretch. The rock-hard beds you find in most Vietnamese hostels may not pass the Four Seasons Goldilocks Mattress Test but they do make excellent yoga mats. Suitably contorted back into shape, I pack my kit, load up the bike and am on the road by six o’clock. ‘On the road’ in this instance entails walking 49 feet across the street for a steaming bowl of pho bo. Noodled up, I set off, first in the wrong direction and then west: destination Viet Quang and judgment day!
The weather system that unleashed Typhoon Wipha upon this part of Vietnam has now well and truly departed, leaving behind a clear azure sky and a blood-orange sun, rising ominously above the mountains in the distance.
I roll steadily through village after village, some pretty, some not and each separated by a short steep rise, spiteful enough to sting my legs but too potholed and bumpy to offer up any rhythm. The blistering sun, now a dazzling white, bakes the land and all upon it. From 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon, it beats down from high above, offering neither shade nor gentle zephyr to mitigate its debilitating rays that bore into us with ruthless ferocity. I hunker in whatever shade I can find: under a tree, a cafe awning or in the emaciated shadow of a parked truck.
I finally roll into Viet Quang: A decision must be made.
Head north to Ha Giang, a place so familiar to me and the hordes of motorbike tour groups I will likely encounter there?
Or continue west on the Trans-Northern Belt Road, risking landslides and road closures on a route I have never ridden and which will take me across the widest part of Vietnam, from Ha Long Bay all the way to Dien Bien Phu?
Go west, old man! Into the unknown, on a new adventure aboard my beloved old Condor.
And so tonight I bed down in the little town of Pho Rang. My kit is washed; time for some dinner and rest.
For tomorrow, we ride.
Day 5: Pho Rang to Than Uyen
Heat and dust
As I set off in the early morning with a tummy full of noodles, little do I know that the menu for the remainder of the day will be heat, dust and an entire mountain range under repair.
Shortly after leaving town, the road rears up like an ocean swell. After a few moments of silent protest, I remind myself that this is the point of it all. It is, after all, why I came here, precisely in search of those places where the road rises. So I complain for what, exactly?
Pacified by this impenetrable logic, I settle back into the task at hand and claw my way up the steep incline with the vim and vigor of a retired cart horse.
By 9 o’clock the sun is already high in the sky, its rays beating down on me like raining lava. After the 48°C sufferfest of yesterday, I have taken the precaution of slavering my body with sun cream. Now swimming in sweat and suntan oil, I slither on.
All is well as I pass through the pleasant but innocuous town of Bao Ha. Upon exiting this sleepy little place, however, the road suddenly dissolves into an enormous building site. Cranes, diggers, an armada of trucks, liquid mud and lunar-levels of dust, whipped up by a scolding breeze and an ambient temperature that has just breached 49°C.
And then the climbing starts.
For the next forty-three miles, I toil up and down through the dust and rubble of Vietnam’s largest construction site, on Vietnam’s hottest day of the year, in the middle of which, just for good measure, I tackle the fearsome 8-mile ascent up to Khau Co Pass.
Dust-encrusted motorcyclists, amazed that a person would choose to ride a bicycle along this stretch of road, not to mention in 49°C heat, cheer me on like I’m the “jelly legs” guy at the end of a marathon. I smile back through the layers of dust on my teeth and mutter to myself, “This is why I’m here, this is why I’m here.”
Finally, planet Earth’s longest active construction project gives way to smooth, tar-black asphalt and I glide silently, like a ghost ship covered in icing sugar, toward the most beautiful sight of the day: the town of Than Uyen and my resting place for the night.
A day of glorious torture is over. Tomorrow, we will continue west and ever closer to the end of our little tour. But now, we must rest.
For tomorrow, we ride.
Day 6: Than Uyen to Tuan Giau
Beauty restored
If yesterday’s somewhat epic scramble through the dust and rubble was more about the sporting challenge than touristic highlights, today is an altogether more aesthetic experience, as I return to the lush forests and lakes of earlier days. And after the somewhat brutalising 49°C of yesterday, I am pleasantly treated to the balmy temperature of just 48.9°C today. What relief!
As I pass through the many villages and communes along this historic road, I am constantly reminded of the industry of the Vietnamese people. Everywhere you look, people are busy: building, making, repairing, growing, planting, harvesting or selling. Always busy. As I witness this prodigious level of productivity in all corners by all manner of people, I am assured that the future of this country will be bright and successful, no matter the challenges and setbacks that will inevitably crop up along the way.
Riding my bicycle around this country, as I have done for some years now, invariably fills me with the greatest sense of optimism for Vietnam and its people. I see it in the faces of so many as I travel around the country. Stoicism, national pride, the drive to provide and create a better life for their children and grandchildren. It continues to inspire me every day, as I pedal along this famous old route, the Trans-Northern Belt Road.
Tonight I am holed up in the little town of Tuan Giau, which lies just 43 miles east of Dien Bien Phu, my final stop on this little tour.
My journey will soon be at an end but the memories of all the smiling faces and kind gestures I have been privileged to receive on this journey will stay with me long after I have returned home.
This is also perhaps why I am here.
Tomorrow, one more time, we ride.
Wipha day 7: Tuan Giau to Dien Bien Phu
Coup de grace
With just 44 miles remaining on my tour, I have no real need to wake up at 5 o’clock this morning but then after a while, the rhythm of the road and the daily routine become comforting. And so it is that I set out, full of noodles, at 6:30, heading west to Dien Bien Phu.
This final stretch offers up one or two scenic tidbits but with the wide highway and the ever growing convoy of vehicles converging on the big city, the focus, for once, is more on the destination than the journey.
Progress on the smooth asphalt is steady and by 9:30, my beloved Condor descends into Dien Bien Phu, reaching the end of our short tour.
Over the past seven days my redoubtable steed and I have covered 597 miles and climbed about 10 miles. Our journey along Vietnam’s third longest road has taken us through nine provinces: Bac Giang, Lang Son, Bac Kan, Tuyen Quang, Ha Giang, Lao Cai, Lai Chau, Son La and Dien Bien.
And so it ends. This old body is a little tired but with mind refreshed and spirit renewed, I now head home to Saigon and back to the rhythm of weekday coffee rides.
Before long I will have forgotten so much of what happened on this trip. But what will remain is the reaffirmation that Vietnam is the place I love to be and these are the people I love to live among.
Thank you for joining me on this short adventure. I hope the words and images I have shared with you over the past few days may inspire you to make your own journey along this fabled old road. X
