Five tours, five different kinds of hard

Short and steep

Phong Nha is the tour with the most climbing per day. The Ho Chi Minh Road through the karst rolls up and down for hours, and the caves add hundreds of steps on foot. If you like a hard morning and an easy afternoon underground, start there.

Long and flat

The Mekong Delta route barely climbs at all. Its difficulty is distance and heat: up to about 65 km on the hardest day, in a region where maximum temperatures in the dry months sit around 32 to 35 °C. It is graded 3 on distance alone.

Water first

Lan Ha Bay is a kayaking trip with cycling around it. The paddling is in sheltered water between limestone islands, and the riding on Cat Ba is short but hilly. Four days, Grade 2.

Cooler and quieter

The Bolaven Plateau sits at 1,000 to 1,350 m in southern Laos, so mornings are cooler than the Mekong below. The van drives the long climb up from Pakse; riding it is an optional Grade 4 extra.

All of it

The 14-day Vietnam & Cambodia trip strings Lan Ha Bay, Phong Nha, the Mekong Delta and Angkor together with one overnight train and one domestic flight. It is graded 2 because the van takes the longest climbs in the base programme; the climbs are there to ride if you want them.

• A private guide who rides or paddles with you, plus a driver and support vehicle on every cycling day
• Bikes fitted to your height on the first morning, with helmets, and the option to bring your own saddle and pedals
• Kayaks with buoyancy aids on every paddling day
• A written daily plan with distance, climbing and active hours, issued before you pay
• A named back-up activity for any day that depends on weather

What is never included: international flights, travel insurance, visas, drinks and tips. The safety page explains why insurance has to name cycling, kayaking and pillion motorbike riding.

The five routes are starting points. The most common changes are adding a rest day, swapping a hard ride for a van transfer, or joining two regions. We will also tell you when a change makes the trip worse: adding Phong Nha to a nine-day Mekong trip, for example, costs a full day of transfers for one day in the caves.

If your dates fall in the wet months for a region, we will say so in the first reply and suggest the region that is dry at that time. The when-to-go chart shows that at a glance.