Hanoi (Day 1)

No morning walk today – instead we headed to Cam Ranh International Airport, about 45 minutes drive from Nha Trang, to catch our Vietnam Airlines flight to Hanoi. This airport handles more international passengers (70%) than domestic and is the fourth largest airport in Vietnam. It wasn’t too busy when we arrived, but we were a little worried when we spotted that the earlier flight to Hanoi had been cancelled. Ours was still on the board though, and later we realised all the people from the earlier flight were on our plane. It was full.

I had organised airport transfers for both legs of today’s travels. The first one from our hotel in Nha Trang cost us 280,000VND ($18.50AUD). Very reasonable.

We were booked in by not one, but seven flights attendants, obviously some in-house training was going on. But once we had our boarding passes we headed for security and the Business Lounge.

Check out the scales used here to measure luggage

It is always surprising to me about the variation between security checks in different cities and whether you are flying domestically or internationally. Today, bottles of water were fine, but I had to remove my iWatch and my shoes, and not worry about taking my laptop out.

Even though it was only 10.00am, Mick did consider having a glass of wine in the beautiful lounge we had access to, thanks to our son. But – the wine was Dalat Classic Red – the only one of the Dalat wines we have tasted and he soon changed his mind – choosing very sensibly a soda water instead.

And having access to a Business Lounge does not guarantee you freedom from boof heads.

This guy sat at his chair across from us – ordered the staff to get his coffee, when all the rest of us were getting our own. Then he did not acknowledge them when they waited on him. But to top it off – he sat on his phone (not literally), which was at full volume, video-calling his wife and then watching ‘who knows what’ for 2-3 minutes before losing interest and started watching some different ‘rubbish’. We were eventually saved as his flight departed before ours. Phew!!

Although our plane was delayed, we arrived in Hanoi on time and were met by our driver.

I took this photo as we left Cam Ranh – the coastline is beautiful and dotted with lots of big hotels. Some still under construction.

If we had our time again, we would have possibly spent one night in Cam Ranh.

Our hotel for the next three nights is right in the middle of the Old Quarter. While not a 5 Star hotel, I’m sure it will be very comfortable. We love being right in the middle of everything.

This is the view from our balcony. Mick is happy because it smells like glue. It is the paint and glue section of this area. So, if his shoes fall apart again (which I doubt), he will be sorted.

I found a seamstress this afternoon, and if I have luck tomorrow buying some fabric, I will get an ‘outfit’ made for myself.

I’ll keep you posted.

Mick and I found a bar nearby to our hotel that sells craft beer – thank goodness for Google.

There was one slight problem. I left Mick to settle the bill and to leave a tip while I visited the WC – that’s what the toilet is called over here. And there is usually only one per establishment.

Anyway, Mick fulfilled his duties and then went outside to wait for me. Only problem was I was locked in the WC. I tried the door handle, which was similar to those in Europe, every way possible. Eventually I started to bang on the door hoping that someone would hear me or that Mick would miss me. Luckily for me, someone started giving me instructions from outside the door. It must happen often, or that is what I told myself. Mick was oblivious to all this as he was outside window shopping. He was just a bit peeved that I had taken so long to leave.

Anyway, I am sure we will visit this place again.

Bike Riders Update

Today was the last day. They have travelled a total of 850km on those bikes, and thankfully without any mishaps – not mentioning the mud slide yesterday and a slight bump with a calf today. But everyone including the calf are OK.

It poured with rain for most of their trip today.