Vietnam the third: day 9, Sapa-Hanoi-Hoi An

Today was, simply, a travel day. We hit the hotel breakfast at 7am, just to get something into us before the day kicked off. Our goal was to get out of town before the various streetsellers, who we’d been telling that we were leaving Sunday so we’d be shopping Saturday, caught on and swamped us/set the car on fire/whatever they do in this town. Our car picked us up at about 7.45am, by which stage a few streetsellers were around, but not ones we’d encountered before. We were close to getting away clean, but our driver had another pickup right in the centre, and while the new passengers were being sorted, we were spotted. Fortunately we were able to get away.

The drive back to Hanoi was fairly undramatic: there were a few interesting overtaking manoeuvres, and a near constant beeping as the car had a speed warning set, which the driver generally did his best to ignore. It was around 1pm when we were dropped at Hanoi Airport.

We got checked in and dropped our bags after a bit of queuing, and it was the same deal going through security. The airport is quite busy at the moment, as it’s Saturday, school holidays, and things are just starting to open up again. There were folk of all ages in the building.

Hani Airport domestic terminal has an interesting selection of vendors, in that most of the shops seem to sell both food and souvenirs, and there is a complete lack of stores selling simple travel goods, things like travel tissues, ginger pills, antihistamines, earplugs, that kind of thing. Instead they’d be selling bags of fruit, chips, t-shirts, whisky, random toys, while the other side of the shop would have pho and smoothies.

The flight to Da Nang (or everyone’s favourite airport code, DAD) is a short one, under 90 minutes. We had the fun of having to board busses to get to the plane, as if was parked some distance away. I’m sure I’ve had flights where we taxied shorter distances. Had a brief moment of concern on the flight, as for whatever reason the pilots flew about 40km past Da Nang and seemed to be in no hurry to start turning the plane around. Fortunately they eventually did, and with no luggage issues we were soon in a car bound for Hoi An.

Previous trips from Da Nang to Hoi An involved drivers taking the coast road, along China Beach and past the various coastal resorts and their ominous looking security. This time our driver took us along the inland road, so it was good to see something different) it was also after sunset so we wouldn’t have seen much beach.

Our hotel, L’s pick, is pretty spectacular, very beautiful, lots of amenities, solid location, and they unexpectedly upgraded us to a slightly larger suite. Also the bed is softer than our previous hotel, and as it seems a bit too swanky for average families, I doubt we’ll be awoken by kids running around at 6am.

We made a quick foray into the old town, where we found a quick dinner of chicken rice, rice pancakes, beer Saigon, and a mango smoothie, all for about $12. We’ve missed Hoi An prices, they are a good 10-20% cheaper than Sapa.

We’ve got the best par of a week here, so tomorrow we’ll start the primary mission: replenish wardrobes.