Your holiday starts at the hotel in Hanoi. Airport transfers are not provided - there is a safe and reliable taxi service from Hanoi Airport. The rest of the day is free and from the hotel you can easily take a walking tour of the Old Quarter with its maze of 35 streets, many of them named after particular trades - look out for Hang Gai (Silk Street) and Hang Bac (Silver Street). The hotel is also close to Hoan Kiem Lake (Lake of the Restored Sword), the epicentre of old Hanoi. If you have travelled with your own bike, please assemble it today, ready to be loaded onto the transport in the morning. The tour guide will come to the hotel lobby at 5.30 pm and will provide a pre-trip briefing before accompanying the group to dinner.

After breakfast at the hotel, you will meet the guide (again) and the support vehicle and driver. If you have hired a bike the guide will have it. If you have brought your own bike these will be loaded onto the support vehicle and we will then transfer beyond the hustle and bustle of Hanoi to the start of our ride. From just outside the city, we cycle on minor roads through villages which are home to people of the Hmong, Dao and Thai ethnic groups. The landscape here is dissected by low forested hills and in between there is farmland, with lush green rice fields on all sides. We start off easily, but after a little more than 40 kilometres, we are faced with a long, steady climb of around 500 metres to cross the most prominent of the ridges we have seen so far. From the high point close to the village Thung Khe (706m) we may be able to see the reservoir of the Da River away to the north. We can then enjoy a pleasant freewheel for 10 kilometres or so down to our overnight stop in the Mai Chau Valley. Our guesthouse tonight is in a lush rural location and with its bamboo-clad walls has something of the appearance of a Thai ethnic stilt-house.

We have a longer ride today, but not a particularly hilly one. We start out directly from our hotel, following the spectacular and undulating valley of the Song Ma River with a generally downhill trend. This route was used to carry supplies and ammunition during the Vietnam War and has links to one of the main arteries of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Beyond the small town of Hoi Xuan, our route takes us away from the river and up into a low range of mountains that stretch from the Mai Chau region to Cuc Phuong and to Hoa Lu. At this point the border with Laos is just 20 kilometres away to the west and the landscape around us becomes more striking as we approach Ngoc Lac, with looming limestone cliffs and lush vegetation. It is at this point that we meet the Ho Chi Minh Highway coming in from the north. We overnight in this small town.

We start the day with a short transfer to Lam Son to avoid a potentially busy section of road. Then, we set out on our bikes on the wide and newly-built Ho Chi Minh Highway. On this section of this highway there is usually very little traffic and at times it may feel as if we have the road to ourselves. The tarmac makes for smooth and fast riding with a 360 degree panorama across a landscape that combines pretty farmland and low, forested hills. This is a fertile area and the fields stretch away on both sides of the road, with crops such as coffee, rubber, tea and various fruits. There are also sections where the road undulates amongst low hills and hummocks thickly cloaked by forest. We will stop off for lunch at one of the several small towns and villages that we pass through and arrive at our guesthouse in Thai Hoa late in the afternoon.

After breakfast at our accommodation, we are back on the Ho Chi Minh Highway for the continuation of our ride, generally southwards through Vietnam. The road today heads inland and takes us through lush jungle in places and via a number of beautiful villages which nestle amongst the Truong Son Mountains. This forest-clad range straddles the border with Laos at this point. We have another longish day in the saddle, but with only gentle undulations to overcome, as the route winds amongst the striking and often steep-sided limestone peaks of this picturesque 'karst' landscape. Again, we find a suitable roadside restaurant for our lunch and aim to reach our accommodation in the remote town of Pho Chau in Nghe Province at the end of the afternoon.

From Pho Chau, the Ho Chi Minh highway is still a dream to ride on and we'll appreciate the smooth tarmac as the road continues to pick its way through a pretty patchwork of farmland and forested hills. The scenery is spectacular and the road is tranquil and for the first 75 kilometres it's pretty flat, following the increasingly narrow valley of the Ngan Sau River with low forested hills to both east and west. Beyond Tan Son, the highway turns towards the west for 10 kilometres, before resuming its southward track. At this point we are cycling into slightly more rugged country through interconnecting valleys with thick jungle-clad slopes. The road undulates here and there is even a 250 metre climb (over several kilometres) before we drop down into the Phong Nha National Park and check in at our hotel accommodation in the small town of Phong Nha. This area has one of the most spectacular caves in Vietnam; a true speleological wonder with 65 kilometres of passages and underground rivers. The underground caverns were used as a hospital and ammunition depot during the Vietnam War and the entrance still shows evidence of attacks from fighter aircraft. Nearby there are community projects underway with Flora and Fauna International and it may be possible to visit village initiatives whose aim it is to maintain wildlife corridors between the separate forest areas.

We will have a morning off the bikes which will probably be welcome at this stage of the holiday. After breakfast, we will walk down to the boat landings on the Con River and board the boat that will take us into the Phong Nha Cave. When we reach the cave's gaping entrance the engine is cut and we will paddle into another world. We can go 600 metres into the cave through a series of illuminated caverns. There is also the option to climb 330 steps up to Tien Son Cave, the previously mentioned dry cavern which was used as a hospital and ammunition depot during the war. After our cave visit, we will have lunch before setting off on a short and level cycling stage to the coastal town of Dong Hoi. We follow the Con River for a few kilometres then cycle across a heavily farmed coastal plain to reach our beach-side accommodation. Dong Hoi is known for its 12 kilometre-long beach.

Today there will be many reminders of the Vietnam War, as the Ho Chi Minh Highway continues to take us south through scattered villages and intensive farmland at the inland edge of the 10 kilometre-wide coastal plain. We cross the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) which was set up along the 17th Parallel (line of latitude 17 degrees north of the equator) during the war. This was the dividing line between North and South Vietnam and troops from both sides were not allowed within 5 kilometres of this line. The road is now quite flat and we make good time to the Truong Son Cemetery, a memorial to the tens of thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers who were killed on the DMZ and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. We can pay our respects at this memorial, before completing our ride to the town of Cam Lo. From here, we transfer inland to Khe Sanh, close to the border with Laos. Khe Sanh was the site of a former US marine base and one of the longest battles of the Vietnam War was fought here. We overnight at a guesthouse in the small town of Khe Sanh.

After breakfast, we'll start the morning with a visit to the site of the Khe Sanh Combat Base. The airstrip itself is now overgrown, but there is a small museum here and a few relics of the war in the form of restored bunkers, as well as some abandoned military hardware, including helicopters and aircraft. After this visit, we will be reunited with our bikes and set off on the day's ride, downhill at first from the Laos border to Dak Rong River. Here, we cross a bridge and ride alongside the river on a section of what was once the part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Again, this road is largely traffic-free and runs through a valley which is bounded on both sides by a line of wooded hills. Undulating gently, today's ride makes a pleasant contrast to the flat plains of yesterday. At the 80 kilometre mark, there's a great little climb of around 250 metres that takes us up an open and partially wooded ridge, with great views and even a couple of hairpins. Finally, the road levels out and we follow another open valley very gently downhill to our accommodation in A Luoi.

We follow the Ho Chi Minh Highway southwards for just a few kilometres, before saying goodbye to this great road that we have been following for much of our ride. We now head east and down to the coast, starting off with a long and sinuous descent into a narrow and forested valley at the headwaters of the Sia River. This is a great final day of cycling, through scattered farms and small villages. After around 30 kilometres, we climb again to cross into the valley of the Perfume River and follow this on our final approach to the city of Hue which was the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 to 1945. Before reaching our hotel, we stop off to visit Vietnam's Imperial City, built during the Nguyen Dynasty and recently designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The citadel is protected by fortified ramparts and ringed by a moat. During the Vietnam War the Imperial City was heavily damaged, but is slowly being restored to its former glory. Finally, we cycle to our hotel which is a short distance away on the other side of the Perfume River and prepare for a celebratory farewell dinner.

Your holiday ends after breakfast. Depending on your flight schedule, you may have some free time to look around the city. Airport transfers are not provided - there is a safe and reliable taxi service to Hue Airport. The reception desk will call a taxi for you. The journey time is around 15 minutes.