Finally: Vietnam.
People had been talking this bit of the trip up for a while so we couldn’t wait to get on the plane and get there. We also couldn’t wait to get to our hotel and have four full days of not moving around and fitting into buses, etc.
Before we could do (or not do) that we had to figure out how to get to the airport. With the metro express ruled out as being too expensive we discovered from the trusty Intrepid trip notes that there is an express bus which makes very few stops and costs only 39 HKD. And it stops near our hotel. Perfect.
Hong Kong was very entertaining, particularly at night with all the lights going and the restaurant smells thickening the air. But it was time to go… the flight was at 2.55pm so we wanted to be there by midday, and accordingly left the hotel just after 11am. We said our temporary goodbyes to those we would be seeing again in Vietnam, and promise to arrive safely, etc.
At the bus stop the timetable said there would be buses four times per hour, and we only waited 20 minutes or so before one arrived. Unfortunately we forget that you have to have exact change for the bus. Another couple that had been waiting at the bus stop with us also DID NOT have exact change so we stood there in the door of the bus wondering what we were going to do, while the bus driver rolled off, obviously not of a mind to boot us off immediately. We had a 100 HKD note, and needed 78, and so did they, but neither of us had enough coins to help ourselves or each other out. Even though we just crowding the doorway and looking clueless.
At the next stop a man got on who very nicely changed our hundred into five twenties, meaning that we had enough for the other couple to pay 100 and us 56 for the four tickets, and then we had enough coins to give them the 22 HKD change. With giggles all round we retired to our seats, where we discovered that the girl was from Taiwan but had actually been raised in New Zealand, first in Rotorua and then Auckland. And also they were going to Shenzhen, which was where we had just come from.
Despite the mild difficulties we still made it to the airport bang on midday, and walked into the terminal to find that Vietnam airlines check in is in Aisle D, which was right in front of the doorway, and that it wasn’t open yet. So apart from the last part where we couldn’t check in for our flight yet our plan worked perfectly. Alice was still feeling a little tender in the stomach, and I hadn’t eaten because we just wanted to get to the airport first and ask questions later. On the floor down from departures there is a food court, and a lady who stands near the escalators and cleans the hand rails with something anti-bacterial.
We looked and felt a lot better after lunch, and went back upstairs to find check in now open and a large line which was moving quickly, where previously there had been none. There was some rumour that we should double check the flight times and bookings, having booked as long ago as March, but everything was as we expected it to be. The flight was definitely on at the same time, and we did have seats still booked, but not together as we must have arrived somewhere near the end of the line.
After successfully getting my Hong Kong exit stamp on the same page as the entry stamp, simply by placing the HK departure card in between those pages, we waited around in departures, used the free but slow wireless internet for a while, and then toddled onto the plane where I had a nice Vietnamese man on my left and the man on my right kindly agreed to swap seats with Alice. The nice Vietnamese man told us useful info about Hanoi and the distances to various other cities, and I had a marvellous lunch because Alice only wanted to eat plain non-reactive food and gave me half her meal.
It was an hour and a half flight so by the time we’d finished eating and looking through the inflight mag, which had a short but excellent article on a Vietnamese photographer and some of his shots of coastal fishing people, it was already time to land. Customs at Hanoi is refreshingly fast and simple and basically the same as everywhere else. Luckily the nice man put the Vietnam entry stamp on the opposite page to my visa, so everything was proceeding according to plan there. We couldn’t get our ATM cards to work in the ANZ machine, which is odd because one is an ANZ card, but thankfully they worked in one of the others, so we could lay our hands on some Vietnamese Dong. I still had significant brain-fade from the late night-early morning that day and accidentally withdrew 50,000 dong, which on further reflection turned out to be about five dollars in Australian money. Take two…
Taxis crowd around and all but bid for you at the airport exit so we had no trouble getting into town to our hotel. But we paid $15 USD and then later on read in the trip notes that you should pay $12… (sigh).
What else that day? The porter carried our bags up to the room for us, and as the door opened I said to myself ‘Let it be palatial.’ And it was.
Our hotel rooms in China had been nice enough but not quite so big as this. Space to unpack physically is nice but not nearly so good as time to unpack mentally. Alice was still not feeling settled, but for plain food there is nothing quite as good as…Tofu Pudding! Which was now looking like a wise investment. And for the record, it actually tasted pretty good.
Greg
