Ho Chi Minh Road

There is no pretty way out of Saigon to the north, only a simple one. Cross the Saigon River at Binh Trieu bridge and follow QL13 through Thu Dau Mot and Ben Cat. It is a broad, busy road lined with factories and traffic lights, and bikes keep to the right-hand lanes. Since the 2025 mergers all of this is officially Ho Chi Minh City, so on paper you do not leave town for the first 70 km.

At the big junction in Chon Thanh, about 85 km out, turn right onto QL14. This is the Ho Chi Minh Road, and you will follow the number 14 for the next six days, some 980 km, to Dakrong Bridge in Quang Tri. The first hour runs dead straight through rubber plantations to Dong Xoai, a plain provincial town with every service. Beyond it the land begins to roll: cashew and pepper farms around Bu Dang, then a long, gradual climb onto the plateau at Kien Duc and on to Gia Nghia, a hill town at around 600 m where the evening is noticeably cooler.

QL14 is the lorry road between Saigon and the highlands, and it is the least relaxing part of this route: container trucks, farm lorries and sleeper buses all day. The most recent rider reports describe a generally good two-lane surface, and news through 2026 adds local trouble, with patched, rutted or sunken stretches where the heavy traffic has worn it. No current end-to-end condition report turned up in the research for this guide, so ask as you go. It is also a long first day. Be over Binh Trieu bridge by 6am, or break the ride in Dong Xoai.

After yesterday, an easy one. QL14 runs north from Gia Nghia over rolling hills of coffee and pepper, through the small towns of Dak Song and Dak Mil, where a lake beside the highway makes a natural coffee stop. Watch for one set of roadworks at Gia Nghia itself: about 300 m of QL14 in Bac Gia Nghia ward has been narrowed by barriers since a landslip in 2023, and a repair that began in autumn 2026 was due to run until about May 2027.

From Dak Mil the road turns east, drops gently to Cu Jut and crosses the Serepok River into Dak Lak province. Just across the bridge, a side road (look for signs to Thac Dray Nur) leads about 12 km south to Dray Nur, the best-known waterfall in the highlands: a curtain of water more than 30 m high and, in the wet season, some 250 m wide. February is the dry season, so expect a thinner fall and more rock. The detour adds about 25 km and an hour or two.

Then it is 15 km into Buon Ma Thuot, the largest city in the highlands and the centre of Vietnam's coffee trade. Arrive by early afternoon and you have time for the Dak Lak Museum, which covers the province's peoples and history; the long wooden houses of Ako Dhong, an Ede village now inside the city; and the Victory Monument at the six-way junction in the centre. The attack on the town on 10 March 1975 opened the last campaign of the war, and the main square is named for the date.

Today is plateau riding: wide, mostly straight and quicker than anything since Saigon. QL14 heads north-east out of Buon Ma Thuot through Buon Ho and Ea Drang, the main town of Ea H'leo, across red earth planted with coffee, pepper and rubber, with wind turbines turning on the ridges. It is a long day but an uncomplicated one, and tour groups routinely cover it in a single ride.

North of Ea Drang you cross into Gia Lai province, and at Chu Se, a pepper town, the road swings north for Pleiku. The Ia Drang valley, where American and North Vietnamese soldiers first met in a major battle in November 1965, lies out of sight to the west. Pleiku, at about 750 m, is a busy, workaday city and a good place for lunch. Its one essential sight is 7 km further on, just off the highway: Bien Ho, also called T'Nung or the Sea Lake, which fills the crater of an extinct volcano and is reached along a strip of land lined with pines.

The last 40 km to Kon Tum are easy. It is a small, friendly town on the Dak Bla River, known for its century-old wooden church and for the tall thatched communal houses, called rong, of the Bahnar villages on its edge. If you take one rest day in the highlands, take it here.

From here north the route is the same road as our Saigon to Hanoi guide, which describes this day more fully as its stage 6. In short: 43 km of coffee country to Dak To, where a hilltop memorial with two tanks recalls the heavy fighting of 1967 and 1972; then Ngoc Hoi, where most of the traffic turns off for the Laos border; then a quiet river valley to Dak Glei.

After Dak Glei the road climbs Lo Xo Pass through thick forest on the flank of the Ngoc Linh massif and drops to Kham Duc, a small district town. This is where the plateau ends and central Vietnam's mountains, and its weather, begin. Lo Xo was cut by landslides for four days in late October 2025, and in April 2026 a newspaper described about 30 km of the road around Kham Duc as badly broken up, with repairs unfinished. Expect patched and uneven concrete, gravel on the bends and crews at work.

This is the stretch the classic route misses when it turns down to Hoi An, and it is the best riding so far. The first 56 km follow a rocky river down a forested valley to Thanh My (the same road as stage 7 of our Saigon to Hanoi route). Thanh My is a crossroads town with fuel, where QL14B leaves for the coast. Stay on the Ho Chi Minh Road and cross the river.

The next 55 km to Prao are a long string of switchbacks through forest, passing near the A Vuong reservoir. Prao is a small market town of the Co Tu people, with fuel, noodle shops and a couple of guesthouses: the last of all three for a while.

From Prao the road turns west up a river valley to A Tep, then north into the mountains, where two tunnels, about 7 km apart, carry it under the ridge between Da Nang's hill country and Hue's. It comes down into the A Shau valley around Lam Dot and follows the valley to A Luoi, with A Bia, the hill American soldiers named Hamburger Hill, away to the west. In about 100 km there are a few hamlets, forest set aside to protect the saola (one of the world's rarest mammals) and hardly another vehicle. None of it is difficult riding, but it is a full day, so start early.

After yesterday, a short day by design. The Ho Chi Minh Road runs north up the A Shau valley, once a key branch of the wartime trail, then crosses Pe Ke Pass on the old provincial boundary into Quang Tri. For about 90 km it passes forest and the villages of the Pa Co and Van Kieu people, following the Dakrong River for the last part, and meets QL9 at Dakrong Bridge.

Turn left on QL9 and climb the last 14 km to Khe Sanh, a coffee-growing town on a cool plateau and the site of the 1968 siege. The small museum at the old Ta Con airstrip, just north of town, deserves an unhurried hour. This stage is the second half of stage 9 in our Saigon to Hanoi guide, which has more on A Luoi and Khe Sanh.

Use the free afternoon to get ready for tomorrow: fill the tank, buy water and food for the road, look over your tyres and chain, and have an early night.

The Ho Chi Minh Road West is the reason many riders come this way at all: about 230 km of narrow concrete road through the mountains along the Laos border, with almost no traffic. It starts beside the old airstrip just north of Khe Sanh, runs through the coffee farms of Huong Phung and over Sa Mu Pass, then follows ridges and river valleys for some 90 km to Long Son, the only village of any size.

Beyond Long Son the road enters Phong Nha–Ke Bang National Park and winds for the best part of 80 km between forested limestone hills. At Tra Ang junction, turn right for the 15 km descent to Phong Nha village.

It is surfaced all the way and not technically hard. What makes it the most demanding day of the route is its length and its emptiness: riders average 30–40 km/h, there are only two fuel pumps, and help is a long way off. Our Saigon to Hanoi guide covers the day in full as its stage 10; read it the night before. If the morning is thick with mist or rain, wait a day or take the eastern road.

North of Phong Nha this is the same road as stage 11 of our Saigon to Hanoi guide, but this route stops sooner. Ride 14 km to Khe Gat, a wartime airstrip where the two branches of the Ho Chi Minh Road meet, then over the short Da Deo Pass and through the limestone valleys of Minh Hoa, with next to no traffic for the best part of 100 km.

The country opens out towards Huong Khe (about 125 km), which has fuel, food and guesthouses, and a few more trucks appear, heading for the Laos border crossings. Beyond the town the forested ridges of Vu Quang National Park, where the saola was first identified by scientists in 1992, rise to the west. Pho Chau (about 180 km) is an unremarkable market town at the junction with QL8, and a practical place to stop.

Stopping here keeps the day under 180 km, which matters in February, when this stretch is usually cool, grey and damp. It also sets up tomorrow's long run.

The longest day by distance, and one of the easiest by road. North of Pho Chau the Ho Chi Minh Road crosses into Nghe An and passes the tea hills of Thanh Chuong. At about 90 km, on the southern edge of Tan Ky, a monument beside the road marks "Km 0", the official starting point of the wartime Ho Chi Minh Trail: a natural stop for a photograph and a quiet minute.

From Tan Ky the road runs through the farm country of western Nghe An and into Thanh Hoa: sugar cane, rubber and long straights past Yen Cat to Lam Son, where Lam Kinh, the ancestral citadel of the Le kings, is a short detour. Traffic thickens from here through Ngoc Lac, and the day ends at Cam Thuy on the broad Ma River.

On this road a steady 45–50 km/h comes easily, so 255 km is seven or eight hours with stops. Stages 11 and 12 of our Saigon to Hanoi guide cover the same road in more detail. If the weather is foul, stop in Tan Ky and add a day.

Cross the Ma River and stay on the Ho Chi Minh Road. Limestone hills close in around Thach Quang, and the road then cuts across the wooded western corner of Cuc Phuong, Vietnam's first national park, before coming out at Hang Tram, about 36 km from Cam Thuy, where QL12B crosses. You are now in what was Hoa Binh province, part of Phu Tho since 2025.

The next 65 km are a working landscape: sugar cane, low karst hills, limestone quarries and cement works, with more trucks and more dust the closer you get to the capital. The road passes Cho Ben, enters Hanoi's outer districts near Mieu Mon and reaches Xuan Mai, where the Ho Chi Minh Road meets QL6. It is not a pretty finish, so do not linger.

Turn right onto QL6 for the last 36 km. The first 22 km, from Xuan Mai through Chuc Son to the edge of Ha Dong, were being rebuilt as a wide urban highway through 2026, with opening to traffic promised before Tết 2027 and finishing work likely into the spring: expect dust, lane changes and uneven joins. From Ha Dong the last 12 km into the centre are dense, slow and oddly orderly. Hold a steady line, go with the flow and park by Hoan Kiem Lake. You have ridden the length of Vietnam without once seeing the sea.