With our tickets, passports and Vietnam visas in hand we arrived at the Vancouver Airport a few hours before our scheduled flight. As we approached the self-serve check-in kiosk a young man came over and asked if he could help us. Well, why not? Oops, he didn't know how to deal with the visa question, so off to a check-in agent for us. The agent seemed equally unsure as to how to process the visa although she knew the airline had to make sure we had a valid visa before they let us board even though Air Canada was only taking us as far as Seoul. About a half hour later we were through security and ready to go. Our flight to Seoul was long but comfortable in Preferred Economy (bigger seats etc). We had about 2 hours layover for our flight from Seoul to Hanoi. We had to go through security even though we didn't change terminals for our transfer and we found our Asiana Airlines departure gate with lots of time to spare. However, about a half hour before the scheduled departure, a woman appeared holding a sign with Brian's name on it. What's up we asked as we had gone through the visa thing in Vancouver. Well, Asiana had to also know that we had proper visas before allowing us to board. The woman explained that we had to go half way across the large terminal and find the "transfer desk" and should hurry! Off we went, found the transfer desk and after a quick look at our documents they gave us the "ok to go". Back to the gate just in time to start boarding. Whew, potential issue avoided. Through our hotel in Hanoi we had arranged a driver to pick us up in Hanoi. Easy and relatively quick passage through customs and immigration and found our driver as expected. A half hour or so after a late night drive through Hanoi we were checked into the
Hong Ngoc Cochinchine Hotel and ready to start an adventure.
A few pics of street vendors from our hotel room balcony...
Friday morning, our first day in Hanoi, we decided to walk into the Old Quarter to a Viettel Store to purchase SIM cards. Amazing; one month of unlimited phone calls and texts (within Vietnam) and 8 GB of high speed internet per day; total cost for both of us 500,000 dong = $27.50 CDN ($13.75 each). Makes one shake their head at Canadian prices. After getting the cards we walked a few blocks to a Starbucks to see how it compares to home. Pretty much a standard Starbucks with pretty much the same prices as we pay at home. After coffee we wandered around the old quarter and slowly made our way back to our hotel. Along the way lots of stores getting ready for Tet.
We also got our first indication of just how much can be carried on a scooter...
For dinner our first night we tried a relatively new "fusion" place about a block from our hotel. Excellent!
Saturday we decided to check out a more modern side of Hanoi. Using our newly installed "GRAB" app (south Asia version of UBER) we picked up a ride to the Vincom Metropolis Centre, a mall of modern stores with high rise apartments above. Quite posh, and, of course a Starbucks within. After strolling the stores and having lunch in one of the food floor restaurants we used GRAB to take us to the nearby
One Pillar Pagoda, Very interesting place.
Sunday was our day to move to the hotel where we would meet up with our food tour group. We had another nice breakfast at the hotel then got ready to check out. Around noon we called a GRAB and off we went to the Adonis Hotel. Our group meet up wasn't until early evening so we decided to try out yet another Starbucks that appeared to be an easy walk from the hotel.
We took our coffees up to the second level balcony where we noticed a street over is another large Vincom Centre mall, actually much bigger than the Vincom Metropolis that we went to yesterday. So after coffee we made our way over there and had a good look around. A very modern shopping mall for sure. Afterwards we took a GRAB back to our hotel where we met the other tour group members. A nice size group of seven plus our guide. A couple (Lara and Manu) from Switzerland, a couple (Dan and Sam) from Australia, a Canadian solo traveler (Liz who lives only a few hours from our home), us and our guide, Anh, a young woman from Vietnam. For our first dinner, as a group, Anh took us to Bun Cha Huong Lien, a little hole in the wall place put on the map when President Obama and Anthony Bourdain ate there in 2016.
After a very good dinner, on the way back to the hotel, Anh took us to a sidewalk beer bar for nightcaps. Let the food tour begin :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment