Moving Day Continued (A New Day) - Bangkok to Hanoi 🇻🇳

It’s now 5:40 a.m. Bangkok time. We’ve lost track of what time our bodies think it is. I had about 2–3 hours of sleep, and Sarah had none. She’s hanging in there, but we’ve got a two-hour flight to Hanoi, Vietnam ahead of us.

The flight leaves on time at 7:45 a.m., and the time goes by pretty quickly. Near the end, Sarah lets me know she’s had enough flying for the day — we need to get her to a hotel for a sleep ASAP.

We carried our larger backpacks onto the plane along with our front packs, so there’s no luggage to collect. After a quick stop at customs — where our printed visas are barely looked at — we’re officially in Vietnam. The visa to enter cost $25 USD and required a scan of our passports plus a recent photo. The online system compares the two and checks how similar they are. Mine came back as 90% likeness, and Sarah’s was only 65%. She must be looking younger with all this travel!

You also have to provide an exit date and exit port on the visa application — which we didn’t have. We made both up and, to avoid issues with not having exit flights, said we’d leave via a land border crossing into China. Who knows, maybe that’ll happen, but it’s unlikely. Either way, there were no problems getting in.

We had pre-booked a taxi to take us to our hotel and soon found someone waiting with our name on a sign. He wasn’t the driver but the person coordinating the pickup. Oh, and don’t worry — it’s a free taxi! It’s included with our Booking.com reservation as part of their rewards scheme.

While waiting, I spotted an ATM and decided to grab some local cash — 2,000,000 Vietnamese Dong. We’re millionaires! (That’s about $137 NZD.)

The driver pulls up and off we go. He looks just old enough to have a licence — probably in his early 20s — and tells us he’s in his fourth year of a marketing degree. The ride into the city is straightforward and much quicker than I expected. I’d imagined we’d be sitting in bumper-to-bumper scooter jams for hours.

As we enter the Old Quarter, where we’re staying, it’s exactly what we were expecting Hanoi to look like — narrow streets, constant movement, scooters everywhere, and people selling everything imaginable. Organised chaos. The driver gets us close to the hotel, and I help with the last bit of navigation.

Our hotel is seven storeys tall with a narrow street frontage, surrounded by Hanoi street life — just the kind of experience we were hoping for, though I’m not entirely sure I’m looking forward to walking around these streets yet. It looks slightly dangerous!

We’re greeted with a lovely passionfruit drink and an ice-cold towel. We sit and refresh while they handle the passport registration and payment. Thankfully, they already have a room ready for us, even though it’s not yet 11 a.m. That’s awesome.

We head up to the 5th floor. The room is small and has no windows to the outside world — common in Hanoi — but it’s clean and comfortable. It’s a three-star hotel that also offers spa and massage treatments, but it’s not a large or fancy place. Breakfast is included in the $100 NZD per night rate.

We both agree we need some rest — especially Sarah — but I end up sleeping too. A couple of hours to catch up on what we lost, then we’ll try to adjust to local time.

Once awake, we head out to brave the local environment. One lap around our block plus a side street is enough for now. There are no footpaths and plenty of traffic, so you have to stay alert. It makes it hard to look at shops as we walk since most of our attention is on dodging scooters. We check out a few possible restaurants for dinner and stop at a mini-mart for basics: milk, two small beers, two small Coke Zeros, and a bag of chips — all for 115,000 Dong (about $7.50 NZD).

There are interesting looking fruit being sold here. The below picture shows what we now know is called Buddha's hands. 

Back at the hotel, we enjoy a coffee and the chips for afternoon tea.

For dinner, we try a popular Vietnamese dish called pho — a broth with noodles. There’s a place just around the corner with good Google reviews. It was called Phở Sướng.  It’s a very authentic spot but located away from the busiest streets, so our food wasn't flavoured with exhaust fumes! We both had a bowl of beef pho, each with a local beer and some bread to dip in the broth. It’s delicious and surprisingly filling. Total cost 150,000 Dong about $10 NZD.

After dinner, we wander through the crazy-busy streets to see what it’s like at night. It’s full-on — every restaurant has someone on the street trying to get you to eat there. You could get tired of that pretty quickly. It must be tough for them all to attract customers every night.

On the way back, we take a wrong turn and have to check the map. All the streets and intersections start to look the same after a while. 😂