Why Vietnam and Cambodia?
Where are they?
But isn’t it a bit hot for you over there?
So what’s the plan?
Ok, off you go then.
Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th February 2018, Travel and Hanoi
All my bags were packed and I was ready to go, I had checked the presence of my passport several dozen times and was good to go. I put my case and satchel in the car and set off to the most pitiable looks from Kara and Kaylee sat in my living room window. An uneventful drive later I pulled in to the car-park of the Crowne Plaza Hotel and checked in. I had pre-booked parking for the duration along with a night’s accommodation and an evening meal.
I met up with Raj, a friend from the BT days who had expressed his interest in coming on the trip, and we caught up over drinks and a meal. And more drinks. Our flight was not until 11am the following morning but we were flying out of Heathrow Terminal 4 which is a bit of an odd one out on it’s own. Annoyingly I had booked the transfer bus as it claimed to go to T4, but a sign on the hotel desk informed me it no longer ran direct, and I would have to change at T2 or 3. Sod that thinks I, and an Uber later we were at the terminal and checking in.
Raj and I had put in for an upgrade on our flights which is done through a pay or refund system by a third party but one only finds out immediately prior to the flight. We had managed to get an upgrade to Premium Economy for the long-haul flight, 12 hours direct to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The flight was comfortable and the food reasonable, although the in flight entertainment could have been better. I recommend Premium Economy on a 787, nice seats that recline with a footrest and loads of room.
Landing in Saigon we got a taste of weather to come, despite being 6am local time it was already hot and humid getting off the plane. We had to go through passports and customs and collect our suitcases as we had to change to the domestic terminal for our connection to Hanoi. Checked in and bags dropped, no upgrade for this leg, we found a coffee place and killed the hour or so we had to wait before our onward flight. Two hours later we were in Hanoi and were greeted by a rep who took us on to meet two other of our party before taking us to our hotel. There would only be eight of us on the tour which is a good number and made for comfortable bus journeys with plenty of room.
The hotel was in the heart of Hanoi and we got our first taste of the chaos that is Vietnamese traffic, a maelstrom of mopeds darting in all directions with a seemingly impossible amount of people and goods on them. We had a few hours before we met the rest of the group for our orientation meeting which I spent napping in my room. The weather in the north of Vietnam was a quite reasonable 14 degrees so the country was breaking us in slowly.
We met up with Thin, our guide, and the rest of our party and were briefed about what we would be doing over the next fortnight and were asked about our interest in some of the optional trips.
We then set out into the city for our evening meal at a restaurant nearby which seems to cater mainly for tourists, although gives a good selection of local dishes. We all had the set meal which was a series of courses, all very nice. Starting with Pho (pronounced fuh), a noodle soup with pork in, and absolutely delicious. The rest of the courses included fried spring rolls, tempura fried veg, aubergine in plum sauce, chicken in five spice sauce.
After dinner we went for a stroll through the night market which was a chaos of stalls and people, and made our way to a very picturesque lake which we walked around and then found our way to a bar.
