Enjoy an early breakfast, and you'll transfer on the road through Hoa Binh, enjoy spectacular mountain views on winding roads, pass green rice paddy fields, break for tea at a small tribe shop, admire the mountain landscapes, and gaze down the verdurous farmlands. Then continue travel on the road to Mai Chau. Arrives in a Thai tribe hamlet after 3.5 hours traveling on the vehicle from Ha Noi.

After lunch at a local restaurant, we start our first-day ride through Mai Chau valley, exploring ethnic life along the valley, through rice terraces to Poom Coong, to Lac villages, passing Thai's tribe stilt houses, family shops selling tribe custom clothes and souvenirs. The back roads in Mai Chau are almost concrete and smooth, with some still dirt tracks and mostly in removed hamlets. Ride and enjoy watching beautiful rice-terraced fields, see buffalos working on farms, cycle along Ma River, and turn left to Ban Do hamlet, where we have a transfer on Highway 15C to Pu Luong in the late afternoon.