The Old Legs Tour 2026 – Vietnam to Vic Falls – 1st and 2nd November – Two days riding from Van Ninh to Nha Trang
Dist – 174 km
Climb – 672 m
Time – 12 hr 12 min
Av Heart Rate – 117 bpm
Max Heart Rate – 192 bpm
We arrived in Nha Trang for our last rest day, intact, but only just.
The traffic into Nha Trang was beyond bonkers bedlam batshit crazy with a million scooters coming at us from every which way. Mark Johnson got rear-ended by a taxi within a minute of entering the fray, but didn’t incur injuries or blood loss.
Instead of riding with the GPS track up on my phone, I bravely tried to video the ride, both for insurance purposes and so I could believe it later. That turned out to be a very poor decision.
I got swept up in the flow of traffic like flotsam and jetsam and very quickly got disconnected from the other riders, and two wrong turns later, I got very lost. And in trying to get un-lost, I dropped my phone in traffic, and it got run over by a million scooters and a bus before I could fetch it.
It struck me just before all the scooters and the bus that almost also struck me that I still don’t have a clue how traffic in Vietnam works, who gives way to who traffic, etcetera, etcetera. Macca keeps telling me I just need to be decisive, which isn’t easy when you are clueless.
But all is well that ends well. I eventually found the others at our lunch stop at a delicious seafood restaurant, and my cellphone screen is only a little bit cracked. Vietnam sure is tough on cellphones.
Nha Trang is a very cool place, with a stunning beach and an endless array of towering four and five-star hotels. The beach in front of our hotel is busy with Zumba dancers from 05.00 a.m. The street markets in Nha Trang were especially vibrant.
I bought a pair of very fashionable Crocs with a label of authenticity for just seven dollars, and some very loud shirts.
Interestingly Nha Trang is full up with burly Russian tourists with big muscles, tattoos, and pretty Russian girlfriends, and less pretty Russian wives. Alex met some Russians to talk to at a restaurant, including one from Russian Crimea, and they passed comment that not many people liked them anymore, apart from Trump.
As mentioned previously, Nha Trang is also full up with scooters. Scooters are the family vehicle of choice in Vietnam. The record sighting so far on Tour is a family of five on one scooter, plus their two dogs. We also saw a delivery man on his scooter delivering pigs, thankfully plastic inflatable pigs, not real ones.
Our last rest day in Nha Trang could not have come a day sooner. The humidities continue to punish us, and even the easy rides are brutal. We’ve pedalled 1686 kilometres to get to Nha Trang, and we only have 440 kilometres left to Ho Chi Minh City. Alas.
Our last two days riding were the normal crazy mix of busy towns and villages, and rice paddies and gorgeous sweeping coastal roads that took my breath away, like the Chapman’s Peak road in Cape Town, but with spiky mountains, not flat top ones.
I watched a farmer and his tiny 50 hp tractor ploughing his rice paddy four-foot underwater. I rode alongside another farmer and his bull pulling a cart full of bullshit. The cattle breed of choice in these parts are Zebu, which are like a Boran knockoffs, or vice versa. The bull was magnificent and looked rather irritated that he was being subjected to such menial labour.
The towns and villages in this part of Vietnam are especially noisy, because every second house has loudspeakers outside playing birds call sounds at volume ten, so as to attract nesting swallows, so the people can harvest the nests, and eat them in soup.
I listened to ‘Another Universe’ by Arno Carstens and ‘What a Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong on the sweeping coastal road, and rode at the very back, because the other guys ride faster than me, and also because I don’t want our Vietnam adventure to end.
We are riding from Vietnam to Vic Falls to raise money and awareness for Zimbabwe’s pensioners. The generation that built our country have lost their homes, their savings, their farms and pensions to 30 years of hyperinflation and ruinous economics, making them dependent on charity they are too proud to ask for. Alas.
For the pensioners- https://www.gofundme.com/f/old-legs-tour-2026-vietnam-to-victoria-falls
Please also be invited to follow us on Facebook to our finish line in Victoria Falls
Until my next blog- Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.
* Names and images may have been changed for privacy reasons
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