Flying Home

Last morning in Hanoi and Home

Last morning in Vietnam. Off for breakfast, I just don't feel right. Not sure why, sad it is over, list is not fun for when we get home, not sure what next stage of life will bring (retired Friday left for this trip the next Monday), long travel day ahead, whatever it was I just wasn't right. I couldn't even drink my last Vietnamese coffee!

No traffic at all going to the airport at 720am. I wasn't able to check in online so joined the queue, we also decided to check our carry on luggage. No charge for this, and neither of us care when it arrives home.

Our first flight is to Seoul Korea, start talking to the 2 women in front of us on the plane from Hanoi that are from Winnipeg, they said there are 2 people on their tour group from Moncton. Told them to point them out to us, they are sitting right behind us. They live in Shediac, but she is from the same small town as Andre, Andre went to school with her brother. What a small world.

In Korea now for a short 2 hour stop, one more stop in Toronto coming up then finally Moncton. We are looking forward to seeing family and friends, but we will be planning another trip soon! In the Seoul airport there are some many high end stores selling purses, shoes etc.. The kind of stores where they only display 1 or 2 purses on a shelf, needless to say we did not go into those stores and 1 thing would probably cost as much as a weekend getaway.

Made it home safely. Toronto airport is severely understaffed, we were late departing by 1.5 hours with the crew and plane waiting there for grounds crew, what a mess. Home at 2AM, but our bodies have no idea what time it is.

Thanks again to everyone who has written trip reports, answered questions, given suggestions for what to do, you have helped make this trip one of our all time favourites.

Things we will remember

-smell of rice in the fields when the sun and wind hit it properly, we were told sticky rice smells even better!

-crazy traffic and drivers

-honking horns

-Vietnamese coffee

-Kem

-Pho

-taking your shoes off for bus rides and bus rides in general

-cheap beer

-checking into homestays/hotels and first thing we look for is what is in the bathroom and how hard is the bed

-this list could go on and on but this report is long enough!

-most of all the amazing Vietnamese people, they could not have been any more helpful, friendlier, or nicer to us

Todays Pictures:

Love the arrows for the gates

Don't step on the toilet

Airline staff in traditional dress

The plane doors are not open but we are all checked in

Makes for a quick turnaround

Saying bye to Hanoi

Changes quick from city to country side

With rice fields

Free train ride in Seoul

Robots being charged

Books and Drinks but no drinks ????

Smoking lounge

Free games but we did not dare to try

In the food court

High end store. lots of them, more than cheaper one

You can take selfies 

Zones on the boarding pass but people just lined up and boarded, no zone called

You can use an app and the robot will deliver your food order to you

We decided to pay extra for bulkhead as it is a 12/13 hour flight from Seoul to Toronto

It's magic arrival time is the same as departure time

Leaving Seoul

Almost every flight is delayed in TO due to lack of ground staff

Hanoi Last Day of Vacation

 Wake up to pouring rain as we expected. Big breakfast and watch the rain for a while, it seems to be letting up so we are off.

Walk towards opera Opera House again.  Andre likes to find reflections in puddles, but no luck, no puddles. Hardly anyone is out and about. Feel sorry for the vendors today.

Kem Mall place by the opera house catches Andre's eye, he said ice cream was really disappointing. 

We decide to walk towards the Cathedral one last time. Today there is a huge funeral happening, the church was quite full.  Still raining a little, we are getting soaked so head back to the hotel for a break. 

Our window to the hall does not give us any idea if rain has stopped so i go down to the lobby.  Looks like sun is trying to come out! I go next door to pick up the laundry.   Back up to room, i spread out the laundry as it has not always come back dry, a nice pair of white thong underwear is included.  They would have gone nicely with the black lace bra a couple of weeks ago, and again would have fit me when I was 10. We are both short 1 sock, but I'm not convinced full pairs made it to the laundry bag, we shall see when we get home.

Since we have no real plans and we are done with pagodas and temples, to the point where I said look there are flags for something, we both said yep and kept walking. So our plan is to walk along the mosiac tiles on the road that we have driven a few times.  We also wanted to visit Long Bien bridge. 

Long Bien bridge is easy to find, but we were on the wrong side of the highway to get on it. We appeared to be in some kind of local market that had long since finished for the day and was a little depressing to walk through.  Google helps us find the bridge entrance and we walk a little way, funny how scooters are running on what looks like the wrong side of the tracks.

We also saw the sign for the railway station, so a quick visit there too.

We have been in this area before, walk along beside the wholesale market by the great picture op apartments, then stumble on what must be candy wholesalers. Asked about pricing, she helped us pick 6 of all different sorts of candies (.75 kg) for grandkids souvenirs shopping done.

One thing we are both glad is nearly over. Picking restaurants to eat. Nearly all of our hotels included breakfast so that eliminated one decision a day, but still 2 left. Wander around and decide on the Indian place we ate at last week. Good again, it is 2pm, a late lunch, but that us done.

Back to hotel for a little break. I pretty much pack up and get organized for pickup at 7:20am tomorrow morning. Andre, well not sure what he did but it was not packing up and getting organized. 

Off we go for another walk around the lake.  Andre had to back track to the hotel, camera SD card left in the computer, again. I said meet me by the red bridge entrance. Wow the people when i got there. This is the first time we have seen Hanoi as we have read about so often. It is very crowded and great people watching. Buskers are around, badminton, shuttlecock, kids electric cars are pretty much limited to one street, lots of food stands, just a fun afternoon in some beautiful weather.

At the end of the lake we see the coffee bar "Notes".  In we go, get some iced tea and climb up to the 3rd floor to people watch for a bit. When it is busy it must be crazy here, you order on the 1st floor and they tell you to find somewhere to sit, we will find you. I think there are 4 floors! We left 3 notes, have told Nicole which floor we were on and she could go look for them, good luck on that one. Notes are stuck everywhere,  windows, walls, light fixtures and even the ceiling.

We ate so late for lunch neither of us were hungry, so our final meal in Vietnam is Singapore Kem, sad but true.

We did walk a small portion of the night market, I bought a reusable bag and we are adding a keychain to the kids candy, I can hear the disappointment already. 

For no plans at all today because of the weather and just tired of museums, pagodas etc we still managed to log 15 km walked, doing nothing really except enjoying Hanoi.

Off to bed, working on a list of things that need to be done when we get home, now that is a little depressing.

Today's Pictures:

Love the Vietnamese coffee at the hotel for breakfast

Got rain overnight and more in the forecast for today, the vendor are prepared

 

Many small juice/smoothies bars but we mostly stayed away from them

Mom & daughter with flowers

One thing we did not do but were asked 100 times

Walk around the lake

Small temple near the top of the lake

My kind of food truck

Where we went to drinks on the rooftop

Someone caught this fish from the lake, not sure I would eat it

Old pagoda in the middle of the lake

Lots of leaves on the ground from the thunder storm last night

Since when is the 1970s vintage

So many places to get coffee in old town

donut like ball sellers, they offer you one to taste, never did

Ice Cream (Kem) mall, had to get 1

About 10 murals inside

Getting ready for a busy day

My tint green tea/vanilla swirl cone

Many small alley in old town

At the bottom of the lake:

First floors are store etc and the top ones are normally apartments unless it's coffee shops

Not where we stayed, a few $$$ hotels if you want to pay for them

Police station

The other water puppet theater

Another pogoda

Funeral at the Cathedral

Ok to park at a crosswalk

Guy helping cars to park

The start of the 5 KM mural

did not see many old signs

Nap time

Highway on the edge of old town busy going that way

Not very busy going the other way

On the bridge we crossed to go see the mural

A few wear their shirts like that

Wendy forgot her hat and she was drying her jacket at the same time

A few pictures from the short walk along the mural

The market we visited was all done, not sure if it was a wholesale market as it was massive

The bridge we are looking to walk on

Not the prettiest area next to the market

A good parking spot

Bridge from 1906

Train in the center, scooters on the left and right

Souvenir/treats for the grandkids

A few good ones like:

I survived Hanoi traffic, What the Pho

Water puppet theater

First time we noticed the clock and we been by many times.

Afternoon is super busy

This morning there was about 10 on the street

Buskers

Good thing I went for my ice cream this morning

Some vendors are not allowed on the close streets

Kids are allowed on a small portion of the closed streets

At the Note Cafe

I can go on Green, I can go on Yellow and I can still go on Red

I think these were candy but not sure

Ice cream for supper but no pictures of how we finished our vacation