What a Three-Month Solo Bikepacking Trip Will Do To You
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Max Owens is a member of a specific breed of adventurer, the kind that will completely throw him- or herself into the unknown just for the sake of seeing what will come of it. After gradauting from college, he wanted to do something completely different. He bought a plane ticket to Asia and brought along not much more than his camera and bike for a three-month solo journey through Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, experiencing all the high and lows he could ever imagine along the way.
From Owens:
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In October 2016, I got on my bike in Thailand and started pedaling. I had no real plan except a rough idea that I'd finish my tour in northern Vietnam. I began in the Northeast of Thailand and wound my way down into Cambodia, really taking my time. In fact, that was a theme for the trip - I had the benefit of not having any sort of obligations (isn't that nice?) and so I ended up spending almost as many days off the bike as on. I spent a little time in southern Cambodia volunteering on a farm and education center before crossing into the Mekong delta region of southern Vietnam. From there I bounced back and forth between the coast and the mountains, which run nearly the entire length of this long, skinny country. I hit the seasons rather poorly, and in central Vietnam I had a lot of really wet days. But the mountains in Vietnam were absolutely spectacular, and after about 4000km of riding I finished in Hanoi. I had no idea what I was doing, and that was sort of the point: to try something totally new.
