Day Thirty-Four

Vietnam Here We Come

Early start for Andy as he hadn't done any packing whatsoever, I pretty pleased with myself that I managed to do it all last night as there was no way two of us could be moving around & trying to pack at the same time in our small room. Lovely English cornflakes for breakfast & the milk wasn't to bad either. I lay on the bed fiddling around with our lovely new laptop & watching Andy move around in the tiny space. A banana each before checking out & we were ready to leave Hong Kong. We were gutted to have missed a full day of Hong Kong because of our bus breaking down & quite sad to be leaving. It is a really lovely place & has a great atmosphere, to be honest it's the only place we have agreed on that could possibly be a place to live quite comfortably.

With our keys handed in we prepared to leave Singh's Guesthouse & head for the shuttle bus to the train station. Thanks to Beverley who had advised us that the Holiday Inn hotel just a few doors up from the Chungking Mansions offer a free bus run to the main train station so we headed there to catch it. We were at the pick up point for literally 2 minutes when the minibus came. We jumped on & done the circuit to Kowloon Train Station.

At the train station it is great because we went to a self service machine & bought our own tickets but because it's the train station direct to the airport we could do all our airport checking in there & also leave our bags. It felt really weird leaving our bags at a train station & not taking them on the train journey to the airport - whoever thought of that idea was just genius.

At the airport it was great, no need to go to a check in desk, no heavy luggage just straight to passport control & customs then it was a case of waiting for your flight to board. We walked around the duty-free having a little spray of perfumes & aftershave for something to do. We popped in & out of a few designer shops & before we knew it we were sat on the plane & in the air. The flight was really quick & only took 2 hours & the in-flight meal weren't so bad too. Flight over time to go through customs & get our visas checked & stamped.

Hanoi airport is really small & we didn't wait to long at the passport control. What we didn't expect was having to put our hand luggage through scanners before we could go to the baggage claim area - we have never had to do that before. With our bags on our back we walked through nothing to declare of course & to a cash machine for Vietnamese Dong. There was a massive tourist information desk in the middle of the airport so we went over to enquire about getting the bus to the district we would be staying in. The lady there was extremely helpful & polite & she gave us a map of Hanoi, some advice & told us where to get the bus. I think we like Vietnam already.

We found the airport shuttle which will take us in to the Hoan Kiem district of Hanoi. With our big bags we climbed aboard & took a seat in these massive reclining chairs. We sat on the bus for over an hour waiting for more & more people to board. More & more people eventually got on the bus & the driver was happy to set off for central Hanoi. As we pulled away the coach seemed rather conformable & better than most we have travelled in whilst being on our trip. On the main road it wasn't long before we got a first taste of mad Vietnamese driving. All over the motorway all you could see was motorbikes galore! The bus driver had his hand on his horn constantly. We were in shock as we tried not to pay attention to the ruthless driving behaviour being displayed in front of us.

We had been travelling on the bus for over an hour so we should be getting closer by now surely! We got out the map that the lovely lady at the tourist information booth at the airport had give us to see if we could match up any names of the streets to any that where on the map. We passed villages which had water buffalos in the fields just walking around, this place looked amazing but the darkness was creeping in fast. The bus finally turned on to a big road & I managed to suss out where we where but we still didn't have a clue where we were going to be dropped off - we knew the street to get off but it was a massive long street so anyone's guess would have been as good as ours at this point.

As we got further in to Hanoi we saw the street name which we needed so we decided to get off the bus & walk the rest of the way using our map for navigation. Off the bus & not a clue of what direction to head in a man had approached us who had been on our bus & was trying to take us to the hostel. At this point we were very weary off people here as we had been told & we also read in many places that people will approach offering to help but their good will & gesture doesn't always prove reliable & you could end up at a complete different hostel & they will try to sell you rooms on the other side of town. It's quite clever though because some hostels have the same name but it tends to be that they are smaller ones are tying to copy the bigger well known hostels so people think it's the hostel they have booked but when they get there it's totally different - it's madness.

With this man approaching us & with us being totally new to the area we had the attitude of trust no-one. We stepped to the side & looked at our map whilst he marched ahead. He eventually got the picture & walked off on his own. We asked to boys sitting at a cafe but thy didn't have a clue & pointed us in the wrong direction. We ended up walking around for ages & ages. It was getting late, it was hot & most of all I was shattered from all the travelling. Using the map we eventually found the big Hoan Kiem lake so we knew it was close. Finally we found a sign pointing is in to the alley way in to a back street & there was the hostel - not a bad location we thought.

We dragged our feet up the steps & through the glass door only to be greeted with the warmest welcome yet. They took our bags & sat us down & placed a big electric fan us to cool us down. They fed us fruit & nice cups of tea so we couldn't complain. To be honest though why were they being so nice? This is too good to be true we thought & as usual we were correct. The hostel woman came over & explained that the hostel was full & that we couldn't stay. We weren't happy to say the least because we had paid our deposit online. They could understand out frustration but as some guests that were already there had decided to stay one more night they said they felt that they had a duty to them. She advised us that we could stay at her sister hostel which is across town but I weren't having any of it. I explained that the reason we had booked her hostel was to be near the lake & that we didn't want to be across town even if it was only for 1 night.

She must have over heard me telling Andy that we will get our money back & find a new hostel because she was desperate to keep is there. She asked us to hang on for 5 minutes whilst she made some calls. After she had finished on the telephone she said that she has booked us in a hotel on the other side of the lake. She explained that it was a $40 a night room but we would get it at the price we have paid for the dorm room. We were happy with that but anxious about what this hotel would be like as why would they pay over the odds for us to stay in a nice room???

Andy had demanded that we get transportation with our bags across to the hotel as it was far to walk & we had been trekking lots already. The hostel lady said no problem. She shoved some helmets on our heads & ushered us out the door with 2 men. Totally unexpected we were on the back of motorcycles with 20kg backpacks on whipping through the streets of Hanoi. Through the crazy traffic & all the other motorbikes we soon arrived at the hotel called King Ly. We couldn't believe our eyes when we walked in to a reception all marble tiled looking smart. The staff there were very helpful & give us our room key. We walked in to this massive room which had a kingside bed, private bathroom, tv, safe, air conditioning & not to mention a lot more - this was great & for only $6 each we soon stopped complaining.

We freshened up & decided to head out on the to busy streets to see if we could find somewhere to eat. We had read on the Lonely Planet book about a restaurant near by that was cheap, western & they could speak English & that the food was reasonably priced so we decided that we would go there. The food was really good & really cheap so we returned to the hotel with big bellies so we were happy. Lying on our big comfortable bed which we had longed for it was amazing. We had football on the tv so we relaxed for ages. We Skyped our families so they knew we had arrived in Vietnam safe before eventually turning off the lights for bed around 3am.

I wonder what our hostel will be like tomorrow?.....