It is HOT in Vietnam!! It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to ride after 11:00 a.m. The temps were always above 100 and most days 110-115 degrees! We weren’t the only ones resting…. Most Vietnamese rest during the middle of the day…

After several attempts to practice before I left, I realized that the Vietnamese language isn’t ONE language, but MANY!!! There are 53 different ethnic groups in Vietnam, and they all speak “Vietnamese” a little differently…. One word said with a different tone can have an entirely different meaning…. Still, I TRIED!

Feast your eyes on this!  I’ve eaten mainly rice, vegetables, and meat in Vietnam.

One of my on-the-go foods is bánh mì, or hot buns, sometimes stuffed with meat or rice & veggies.  Bánh mì comes from colonial times when the French brought baguettes with them to Vietnam.

Drinks and snacks and strange fruits – oh my!

Vietnam is one of the largest growers of rice in the world.  I got to see the rice-growing process from the flooding of the paddies…

…to the harvest!  After the rice is harvested, it is spread out to dry on flat surfaces – in front of homes, even on the shoulders of the national highway!

Scenes from the rice paddies – leveling with water buffalo, weeding, and homemade tractor wheels.

200 miles south of Hanoi, we got lost!  We’re not using Google Maps or Siri or anything like that out here, folks – just an old-fashioned paper map and Mr. Sun.  Some locals helped us with directions, which was difficult with the language barrier.  Our little turnaround totaled 57 extra miles on the bikes!

As a cycling enthusiast, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for bikes on my journey.  Here are some I’ve come across in Vietnam!

When I checked out of my hotel room the other day, I had planned to give the hotel a credit card, but they told me that they would only accept Vietnamese money, called dong.  So I spent all the dong that I had on the hotel room and couldn’t get any more before we left town.  We stopped to get water, and I realized that I only had dollars.  When I asked the shopkeeper if he would take that, he said no!  After some negotiations, he finally took my dollars.  Then I tried to get dong at a gas station, but the guy was going to gouge me!  Finally, after several tense minutes, we found a bank and all was well.  Why was this so critical?  No dong = can’t buy water = WE WILL DIE!

More accurately, a good old-fashioned Vietnamese goat roast!