Vietnam the third: Day 1, Transit Day
Who doesn’t like a 3am start? Me for one, but when the mobile starts beeping and calling out that wonderful catch phrase, “Smile, you’re travelling!” then it’s just a case of sucking up the entitlement and hauling my white arse out of bed. An added bonus was pissing the cat off by having the audacity to get up before she’d had a chance to get in my face about her breakfast.
So it was last minute run around, make sure animals were sorted, recheck the notes for the house sitter, and drive to the airport. Being generally prepared and seasoned travellers, we aimed for 2 hours pre-flight and weren’t too far off that. The Singapore Airlines check-in went smoothly, and as we’re in business class they mentioned the lounge, but what we thought they said was that it wouldn’t be open until 5am. What they really meant was that Borderforce, that wonderful amalgamation of various departments left behind by our previous conservative government, weren’t letting anyone through customs until after 5am. Why? No idea, no explanation given, but I did overhear a conversation where a Perth Airport staff member was talking about copping the blame as they were out and present, while it was Borderforce on the other side calling the shots.
The security check etc went without a hitch for us, though, in one of those coincidences, we met L’s cousin R in the queue, and the scanner didn’t like his bag the first time. The screen said ??, so he had to wait while they scanned it again. Then more queuing at the duty counter, as they seem to be operating on a weird honesty system, running half a dozen stores out of the one till.
The frequent reader of this blog (I’m using the singular but this is probably just wishful) would note that for me, travel begins with a can of tomato juice in the Singapore Airlines Lounge whenever possible. We got to the lounge with 10 minutes to spare before boarding, enough time for a much needed coffee, but no tomato juice was to be found. I hope this isn’t an omen.
The flight was lovely, as business class always is, where we had plenty of room, good service, and some Korean movies to binge. Sadly SIA’s current selection doesn’t include any drama-comedy police movies, so it was Special Delivery and Unstoppable, both good but just a little darker and move violent than I was hoping for.
Changi, the airport of airports. Here the very nice lounge had tomato juice (and Bowmore 10 year-old, a noodle station, dim sum, comfy chairs, and good aircon). Got my first taste of mystery meat for the trip — chicken nuggets.
Singapore to Hanoi flight was similarly wonderful, and I binged on a pretty funny Singaporean food show called Food We Love To Hate, where minor celebrities are invited to get to know better an ingredient they don’t like (the 3 episodes I watched were pork liver, coriander, and durian) before a couple of renowned chefs do their own take on the ingredient. It’s a bunch of fun to watch, even with the weird subtitles that also attempt to describe mood (“disappointed”, “schadenfreude”, and many others). Who knew pickled coriander was a thing?
Hanoi, where the road lanes are optional, indicators more so, and if you’re not using your horn are you really driving? Even our very uneventful ride from the airport to the hotel was not what we were really used to. It was a bit of a relief to get to the hotel, and out of the beeping. South East Asian hotels all seem to do this same thing, where instead of checking in over the counter, they lead you to a separate seating area, give you some tea or fruit juice, and then sit down with you and explain everything, the local area, if they can book anything for you, etc when you’re tired and all you really want to do is grab the key, get in the room, and stretch out horizontally or use the toilet. Appreciate the gesture, but…
Full of much food from the trip, we took a wander of the local streets to see what snack options were available. Sadly, in this corner of the old quarter, not a lot on a friday night: there’s many places to eat hotpot and soup and banh mi, but not much in the way of bite-sized street food. After getting a little bit lost: Hanoi old quarter is not a grid system, four consecutive right turns will take you anywhere but where you started from. Add a bunch of humidity, a smattering of rain, a very early morning, and more bustle and noise than we’ve been exposed to for a number of years, it wasn’t the most relaxing stroll. But we did it, we’re here, and once we catch up on the sleep we’ll be ready to eat.