If you’ve ridden with us any time in the last fifteen years, chances are you rolled out of the hotel on a mountain bike. That wasn’t an accident of taste — it was the only bike that made sense for us, running dozens of riders a week across red clay, rice-paddy dikes, and mountain passes with wildly different surfaces from one province to the next. But walk into our shop in Saigon today and you’ll hear a different conversation, one that includes gravel frames and battery packs alongside the usual talk of tire pressure and gear ratios.

Why Mountain Bikes Became the Backbone of Our Vietnam Tours

Our reliance on mountain bikes was never about trend-chasing — it was about running tours well. A hardtail MTB shrugs off potholed backroads, unpaved passes, and the occasional water buffalo crossing without complaint. We keep a fleet in a dozen frame sizes, ready to swap a part at 6 a.m. in a town with one hardware store, and that durability isn’t a nice-to-have for us. It’s what keeps the whole operation running. It’s also been the right call for most of our guests: active, curious, not looking to set records, the humble hardtail has always done the job beautifully.

We Know You Ride Gravel at Home — We Listened

A lot of the riders who come to us already own a gravel bike. A weekend gravel century back home, maybe a local gravel series they show up for every fall — and then they land in Vietnam, we hand them a mountain bike, and we can see it on their face: this isn’t quite what they signed up for. For years we explained it away as “the terrain here needs it,” and mostly, that’s still true. But we heard the same thing often enough, from guests who’d flown a long way and wanted the ride to feel like their own, that we stopped explaining and started listening instead.

Riders who love gravel at home aren’t looking for a compromise when they travel. They want the same feel under them — drop bars, that lighter, quicker ride — just pointed at rice paddies and mountain passes instead of the gravel roads back home. That’s a fair ask, and we get it: nobody wants to fly halfway around the world for a trip that feels less like “them” than their Saturday morning ride. It’s the reason we didn’t just tack a gravel option onto the website. We built dedicated routes for it.

How This Plays Out on Our Tours

Here’s the part that matters if you’re planning a trip with us: this isn’t MTB versus gravel versus e-bike. Vietnam’s terrain is too varied, and a durable, easy-to-service mountain bike is still our default for a multi-day tour with a big group and unpredictable roads. What’s changed is that you now get a real choice on top of that default.

Most of our tours still run on MTB as standard, included in the price — that hasn’t changed and isn’t likely to. What’s new is the option to pay a surcharge and swap onto a gravel bike or e-bike for all or part of the route, if that’s the ride you’re after. It’s an addition, not a replacement — our mountain bikes are still doing most of the work, and we’re not about to change that.

We run gravel bikes alongside our mountain bikes on every tour — Trek and Cube frames, specially imported, ready to swap onto for all or part of any route. For guests who want to go all-in on gravel, we also run dedicated gravel-only tours — longer days, faster pace, higher-end accommodation, including our Saigon to Hội An route. It’s the clearest example of how we think about this: the MTB fleet stays the foundation of day-to-day touring, and gravel (and e-bike) run right alongside it — as an upgrade on any trip, or as the whole point on a dedicated gravel route.

If most of the photos on our site still show mountain bikes, that’s simply because MTB has carried the bulk of our riding for well over a decade — not because our gravel and e-bike options aren’t genuinely ready when you want them.

Which Bike Is Actually Right for You?

If you’re in your 40s, 50s, or beyond and this is your first trip with us, our honest answer is: start with what’s included. A well-maintained mountain bike on a well-designed route will handle almost everything Vietnam puts in front of you, and it’s the bike we know best. If you’re an experienced rider who wants a livelier feel on the tarmac sections and doesn’t mind trading a little rough-terrain confidence for speed, ask us about the gravel upgrade. And if you’re coming to enjoy the scenery, the food, and the company more than the climbs, ask us about the e-bike upgrade — it lets you do exactly that without sitting out the harder days.

Ready to Choose Your Ride?

The bike you choose shapes the trip, but it shouldn’t be the thing you worry about before you go. We’ll talk you through the terrain on your specific route and help you decide whether to stick with the included mountain bike or add gravel or e-bike for part of the journey.