Hanoi Escapade - Day 1
The almost-forgotten entry... ...DAY ONE / 28 December 2006, Thursday
SIN - HO CHI MINH - HANOI
As usual, Tempest reached the airport way before me. Our flight was scheduled to be at 1430 h. But due to the many changes Vietnam Airlines made, we decided to arrive at 1pm instead (me at 1.30pm though). Who knows, the plane might decide to land early after all the numerous change of flight plans to land at a later hour.
I ended up having to finish part of my lunch on the plane, thinking that we were going to be late. Then, the plane was delayed!
There wasn't much to do on the plane. No movie player. No music player. All I remembered was flipping through Today or Newpaper. Soonafter, lunch was served.
Pretty boring 3 hour flight.
The wait at Ho Chi Minh's Airport on transit to Hanoi was none the better. Clearing the customs was not as easy as were in Malaysia but seemingly just as bad as Bangkok. The communist-style uniform-clad officers don't smile, dilly-dally, talked amongst themselves, and looked listless. Not very friendly fellows.
It was another 3 hour flight to Hanoi. The only gain was the extra airline food we got on transit to Hanoi. So 1 food deal in exchange for a total of 2 - 3 hours of flight delay.
We reached Hanoi in the evening, at around 8plus. Our first activity was to look for a money changer. 1 SGD = ~ 10,000 dong. A more "profitable" method will be to exchange SGD for USD in Singapore, before exchanging the USD for dong in Vietnam. This is because USD is more valued in Vietnam (means you can buy more dong with the same amount of USD or SGD in equivalence), and provided that the exchange rate of SGD against USD is 'high'.
We read that the minibus travelling from the airport to Hoan Kiem Lake, where our hotel was nearby, charges only USD$2 per pax, and that the local cabbies aren't an honest lot who often collaborates with unscruplous hotel owners to trick tourists, we opted for the former. But as unlucky as we could get, the minibus was unable to go off without a significant number of passengers onboard. In fact, we were the only ones in the bus, waiting for 30minutes before we gave a sigh and went off to look for an at least decent-looking cabbie.
Two 'headmen' serving different cab companies (or maybe syndicate?) were trying to encourage us to take their cabs. "Choose one", Tempest said to me. I took the one on my right as his cabbie looks more "tood". Hehe. Indeed, he was sorry for trying to trick us and took only USD $10 from us. Read Tempest's entry here for the full story.
We stayed in Anh Dao Hotel which cost us USD $15 per night and came with free breakfast buffet. The hotel was small but decent. As per our Bangkok trip, we only paid for the first night; we thought that we could try to find other accomodation which might be cheaper and better! After settling down, we went out for a walk around the famous Hoan Kiem Lake. AND to get some food! Oh yes, and our search for hotels!
There were numerous little hotels around Hoan Kiem Lake, just like Bangkok's Khao San area. We made a few enquiries, and decided that we got a reasonably good deal in Anh Dao after all. We even chanced upon the Bamboo Hotel which Tempest's cousin recommended! It was a cosy & well-organized hotel; everything was in bamboo, even the bed frame! I quite like it, but Tempest felt that the woody smell was a tad too strong. So we moved on.... to the lake.
I was rather disappointed. The lake was neither clean nor stunningly big! It was just about the size of Bedok Reservoir, or so it impressed upon me. At a very leisurely pace, we easily covered the circumference of the lake in less than an hour.
Although New Year was approaching in a few days, there was no sign of celebration except some banners & red-colored material which wrote some "Happy New Year" lines or the like. Not exactly a spectacular sight.
Sigh... we found nothing to eat. There was no Mac or 7-11 like Bangkok. Upon returning to our rooms at 11plus, we munched on the little bun & butter which we saved from Tempest's pack of airline food. Heavenly!
posted by slingwoof @ 6/25/2007 02:22:00 PM
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