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Today we had to check out of our room by 11, so we had quite a chilled morning, got our bags packed up and left them in the lobby of our hotel. Our flight wasn't until 8pm so we had plenty of time to kill.
First on the list was to get our boarding passes and Visa approval letter printed off. We found a little tour shop which offered printing so headed straight in. It was 2000 kip (15p) per page. We had like 20 pages to print off ha ha, Visa approval letter, boarding passes and Visa application forms. The internet was ridiculously slow, but we got there in the end.
Next stop was food :-) we had found a great little place on TripAdvisor called Rays Grill House, it was a little walk away but by the time we got there we were starving. It didn't look much from the outside but once inside it looked great. The staff were polite and the menu looked great. Kara went for a Cheese Philly Steak baguette and James took on the burger. The food came super quick and was delicious. The baguette was unreal and so filling, James ended up finish mine off to… Piggy!!
After with our bellies full to the brim, we had a little walk around, got some more cash out to exchange for Vietnamese Dong and decided to chill in a little coffee shop to update our blog. If any of you have been reading it you will now we are several days behind! We've been having a beast, but we've been manic and our wifi has been pretty crap in our last few hotels so has been hard to upload. With free wifi and drinks at the ready we have finally managed to catch up. We spent around 3 hours chilling here, then finally headed back to our hotel to grab our bags. After getting some advice from the manager on what to pay for a tuk tuk to the airport we were ready to go find our lift.
We had originally planned to go catch all of the sunset but with time getting on we decided to head straight for the airport. The first little tuk tuk man we spotted quoted us 60000 kip (£4.70), we knocked him down to 50000 (£3.90) and off we went. The journey took a while as it was around 10km away, the tuk tuk driver had a set of rules of his own, jumping red lights, sneaking through gaps and basically doing whatever he liked lol. We arrived safe and sound though and were ready to check in, once inside we realised how basic the airport was. There were only like 6 check in desks! They didn't even have a conveyor belt for the bags lol, we decided to exchange some money first before we got settled. Nobody stocked Dong so we settled for dollars instead (everybody loves dollars). We seen a lot of people sat down waiting around the check in area, there were no clear signs of where to check in for Hanoi so we just headed on upto the desks. As soon as they started to check us in a lot of people soon followed (trend setters over here).
The check in was simple, the only thing that had to check was our passports and Visa approval letter. We were pretty hungry at this time so headed straight through to the departure lounge to get some food. We had spotted a sign for a restaurant before passport control but just guessing they would have some good options on the other side.
Oh how wrong we were! It was the smallest place ever, 3 gates, one coffee shop, a smoking booth and a little duty free shop! Everything was massively overpriced so we settled for two Laos beers, a strawberry cheesecake (nothing like a cheesecake, more strawberry sponge cake with frosting) and a pot noodle kind of thing. We wanted to spend all of our money and pretty much nailed it with 2000 kip to spare (15p).
We had arrived quite early so had an hour and a half to kill, but by the time we had scoffed down our food and drank our beers we were ready to board. Once on the plane we spotted some person sat in our seats, him not speaking a word of English was hard to get him to move. Eventually he did, he wasn't even sat in the right row. His ticket showed row 35 seat C, we were sat on row 21 seats E and F. James even had to show him how to undo his seatbelt!
We soon got comfy and were in the air, put Marvel on and the time flew by. 50 minutes later we hand landed in Hanoi. Time for the fun of sorting our Visa's. Several people tried to push past us whilst getting off the plane, but James just put him arms across and quite abruptly told them to stop pushing, this seemed to work. They are so rude and I don't know why they feel the need to rush past.
This worked out pretty well for us and we got a great position on the little bus transfer to the airport. We ended up getting to the Visa stand first :-) passed through all of our documents then went to the cashier. The process was simple and really quick, within 5 minutes our Visa was approved, bags collected (first out for once) and we were through passport control. There was a little man waiting for us to transfer us to our hotel with Kara's name on a sign so everything worked out well. We managed to quickly grab a Vietnamese sim and set off. The sim cost 300000 Dong (£9) it gives us unlimited 3g and 10 minutes of local calls, ideal for us as makes it easy to update Facebook, look for directions etc.
The drive to Hanoi was around 1/2 hour, we instantly noticed how much the love there horns over here. I think there horns basically say 'Hello I'm here', 'Coming through', 'Move!' and 'Get out of my way you fool'. They are constantly using them and weaving in and out of everything. Our driver wasn't too bad, didn't speak at all but got us to our hotel quickly. Along the way we spotted ridiculous amounts of signs for Karaoke! I cannot describe how many we seen, first impressions are that they love there horns and Karaoke, I haven't decided which they like more yet.
Our hotel was tucked away down a little side street, it looked nice first impressions were good. We were greeted by a very happy chappy called Kevin, he worked at the hotel on the night shift and got us all checked in. He was a great laugh and loves to talk, gave us a few handy tips and showed us straight to our room.
Its one of the better rooms we have had, its clean has good aircon and has a nice little fridge. The bathroom is tiny, but we are kind of getting used to this now. We quickly dropped our bags off and headed out to get some grub. Kevin gave us a map and showed us a few places where we could get some food, we literally walked around the corner and found a cool little bar. The menu looked good and the beer was cheap! 15000 dong for a beer, thats 70p! These were quite big beers too! We ordered a big Margarita pizza and some fries and just chilled. The pizza was the strangest Margarita ever, it had olives on it and loads of them. Kara instantly hated this, even though I made an effort to pick all of the olives and tomatoes off for her lol. We soon polished it off and were ready to get some sleep.
We plan to have abit of a lie in tomorrow and then head out and see what Hanoi has to offer :-)
J&K over and out!
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