A chapter of my travel writing from our cycle tour, Vietnam 2024

For anyone of the ‘Four Weddings’ generation, bonking is sex as explained by Scarlett to a small child while hand-jiving under a table. To anyone younger with a decent bike habit, it’s the wall you hit when the body’s glycogen bottoms out. While I am a late-learner cyclist with more enthusiasm than skill, I am lucky enough to have friends who are bona fide experts in ultra and enduro cycling, with an impressive accumulation of knowledge regarding fuelling and nutrition for long-distance riding. It is to them that I owe my knowledge of the phenomenon that is bonking, which proved very fortuitous when I encountered my first bonk, somewhere on the hot tarmac south of Tham Cham in Vietnam.

 We had been travelling along QL1, a road blessed with a capacious hard shoulder and stunning views of the coast at the point where a gnarly mountain range peters out into the sea across a plain dotted with small herds of picturesque, long-eared sheep. As we headed south, signs of the regional cusp were creeping in; the sheep, rotis, catholic churches and fish sauce plants all evidence that we were advancing on our destination. South meant both beach and Ho Chi Minh City, two eagerly anticipated targets. Central Vietnam had been interesting enough, with much of the route taking concrete byways through rural land, but the rainy season was as advertised and we had been taking a quotidian soaking before drying out all our gear to repeat the process. Hotels were functional but spartan and for two nights in a row our room number had been 101, which caused wry amusement. We had begun to have doubts about how welcome we were in the medium-sized towns we were passing through. Hard stares were the standard greeting, though frowns also featured heavily, in contrast to the inquisitive, open smiles we encountered in Laos. Our memories of Vietnam had been so positive that this, along with the weather, depressed us, and we decided to make a train jump from Quang Ngai to Thap Cham and speed our arrival to the south. I realise this smacks of negative stereotyping or even xenophobia, and have no idea if it was a reflection of my own negativity or a genuine conviviality void. For this, people of Central Vietnam, you have my humble apologies.

                When the bonk occurred, and before I recalled what to call it, I had spent nine hours on a slow train down the coast sharing a double seat with a travelling vendor harbouring all manner of rancid, leaking sacks and parcels under the seats of our shared space. Reaching our destination predictably late and having to cycle around 7km to the hotel via a supermarket for pot noodles and snacks had done little for my readiness to ride the next day, and much for my insomniac tendencies. Breakfast consisted of half a dragon fruit and some M&Ms before we panniered up and set off into the shimmering morning heat-haze, slightly dazed but excited for more progress. One thing I have discovered on the trip is that I am truly goal-focused. Unplanned progress increases anxiety, as does a lack of focus for the journey. I need a target in my mind’s eye to hang my expectation on. “One more sleep to the beach!” I murmured as we started, mentally setting my carrot on its stick for the day’s journey. 

                The first hint of any trouble was in an innocuous lay-by among a cluster of fish sauce manufacturers. Why businesses in South East Asia all cluster together is bemusing. A whole street of mechanics, an entire section of the town devoted to fabric and beads, or pipes and rivets; 4km of the main road lined with pomelo stalls.  There was precious little to buy in the small shop we had stopped at, but we dug into the supplies, eating what we had and emptying the warm water bidons.

It’s not unusual for recovery to take time at rest stops, but this time I felt as if I had been stamped on. Sinking to a squat, it was all I could do to drink and breathe, let alone consider getting back on the bike. My legs were rocks, my head scoured by heat and toxicity. It took a while, but I switched on the self-talk of beaches and rest, and again we set off. The immediate trajectory was downhill, so all seemed fine, but very shortly I found myself pulled up again in a sand driveway, panting like a dog and virtually unable to stand. Through my ever-practical mind was running a dialogue on the logistics of stopping. How would we find a bus or train to get us to the next destination, would I be able to carry on after that? Was this it??

                Above me was a singularly beautiful tree, its shade filtering the strident sun, dazzlingly green leaves dancing and unusual fruit dropping brown nut-like segments into the dirt. On these, scores of spindly red-and-black beetles were clambering, battling and mating, living their intense beetley lives oblivious to my unfolding trauma. I watched those beetles for a good half hour as I toiled to breathe, fought to replace my panic thoughts with calming mantras, supped warm water and tried not to cry as I knew it would hurt my head. Then I accepted Stuart’s offer of a Coke, which I’d thus far avoided due to a lingering UTI keeping me off caffeine. I knew that I had to move on, and had no scruples as to how that was achieved, so set about replacing the mental red flags for a life-threatening episode with the idea of a tough but surmountable obstacle. The work ‘bonk’ popped into my mind just as I pedalled off gingerly into the light traffic, and I think that, as much as the Coke, gave my legs the boost they needed to make the last 15km to the hotel. Words are important to me, and I often find myself hanging expectation or recovery on a simple phrase or single word. When caring for mum, an  unlikely inspirational quote tugged me along day after day into a daunting future, and when in recovery for alcoholism, daily repeated phrases gave me momentum and stability. So my internal soundtrack for the last15km, as the sugar and caffeine began to reverse the depletion, was “Bonk, bonk, bonk. Bonk, bonk, bonk.” 

                The speed of access to support, thanks to a fortuitous time-difference, gave me a real jump on the situation, mentally and physically. With a head swimming in scary unknowns, simple answers and solutions give focus to a situation and stop that thought-spiral in its tracks. As the answers popped up in our group chat, many familiar but lost in the moment, I scribbled a list in between thank-yous and heart emojis. 

As a practical aside, a bonk is the colloquial term for the sudden collapse of the body (esp. when cycling) as it runs out of glycogen, its ongoing energy supply. Exacerbated by dehydration, it quickly and suddenly produces an energy dive along with faintness and nausea. Ideally, it is a condition best avoided by preventative measures in diet and planning, involving near constant snacking and hydration in the kind of conditions I was experiencing, with focus on the replacement of salts, sugars and electrolytes. An ability to drink while pedalling was a skill that this late-learning cyclist was yet to acquire, but it is truly amazing what necessity can achieve. The next day I was swigging like a tour veteran, albeit with a warning call each time in case of sudden swerves. 

I can’t describe the bonk without addressing one of its causal foundations: menopause. The timing of our year of travels was dictated by the vagaries of life events. We ran our own business for ten years, at the end of which Covid happened, I cared for my elderly mother for her last six months, and then my partner’s mother also fell ill and he worked tirelessly to support her in her last year. Neither of us had taken the now-common ‘gap year’ at the end of education, and once the waters of our lives settled after the turbulence, we knew it was time to unpack the travel plans we had long shelved. I could have been lucky and found that my body continued to tick away with low-level shifts in hormones and symptoms, but unfortunately it became clear in the run-up to our departure that I was probably going to hit full square the multi-symptom, life-altering debacle that is the female body’s shift from child-bearer to knitter-ponderer.  However, nothing like a life-altering fundamental change was going to ship my travel plans. If anything, I’m grateful that the two coincided, as the unlimited self-evaluation time has made it able to analyse and adapt to the changes as they roll out. Minimising symptoms of interstitial cystitis, dealing with increased hair loss, adapting yoga to increasing joint pain and finally deciding that life is genuinely too short to give a fuck about what you look like in a bikini, especially when the body in question just got you over the Hai Van pass on a bicycle, has become an exercise in empowerment. 

The next day was a hillier, hotter and longer version of the one before, and one that had intimidated me pre-bonk, but the preparations and advice paid off. A fantastic noodle soup the night before, decent breakfast eaten slowly with a good digestion period and a stockpile of snacks and electrolyte drinks gave me the confidence to face the obstacles calmly. We took breaks, drank whatever we could get our hands on and jumped for joy when a banana fritter stall materialised by a roundabout in a village otherwise apparently devoid of food. We photo-bombed tourists in pink jeeps, shouted back at school kids and gave vent to Cola sugar highs in the sand dunes, watched by a bemused snack vendor. I also climbed a lot of hills in pretty high temperatures while swearing, until we found ourselves incredulously turning into the gateway of a low-key resort tucked amongst tropical gardens overlooking the South China Sea.

In the manner of the fragrant and ubiquitous Vietnamese green tea coursing through my body each morning, anxiety slowly receded to be replaced by an unfamiliar serenity. No routes to plan, no research of shelter or sustenance, nor repairs to twitchy gears and shrill brakes. An absence of action almost overwhelming.

The first day’s sea was green and feisty but the second, after a percussive night storm, was calm as the lotus ponds of Hue. Pacific reef herons stalked the shore spiking fish, and the celadon waves were finally in synch with my slowing heartbeat. My recovery plan was a kind of one-stop “Eat, Pray, Love”, without the complex travel logistics and budget. A breakfast consisting of a pile of tropical fruit the size of my head with some more fresh juice to boot and a pancake made from scratch and drizzled with local honey. My yoga, my mantras, my words. A sandy beach to hold our two weary bodies, cold zero beers in hand, as we watched the sunset, the waves, the birds. 

Rinse, and repeat.