January 18, 2016

To avoid jetlag, it is always best to adjust your time to local time as soon as possible. If it is day-time when you arrive, try and stay awake until it is time to go to bed. If it is night-time go to sleep. We definitely went to sleep when we settled into our room at 1:30 a.m.

Breakfast is served between 7:00 and 9:30 a.m. and I thought we would sleep later and miss breakfast. We were awoken by the cacophony of Hanoi traffic at 8.00 a.m. Scooters and cars all hitting their horns, either to tell other users that they are there or a toot to get out of my way.

I was awake at 8:00 a.m. and thought I might be able to get back to sleep, but that wasn’t going to happen. We showered and went downstairs for breakfast which was very nice. A wide variety available of crepes, eggs-any way you like from fried to omeletes, fruit, and of course Pho –which is the traditional Vietnamese noodle soup.

After breakfast, I updated and posted the blog while Ralf put my bike together. He put his bike together later in the day.

At 12:30 we left to investigate the Old Quarter and take our lives into our hands with the traffic. The theory is you step out in traffic and keep walking. Praying to the saint of scooter riders may help. Surprisingly this suicidal technique works. You wait for a lull in the traffic and head across the road, you don’t hesitate, you just keep walking and like Moses parting the Red Sea the traffic goes around you, tooting their horns for good measure. Even at cross walks with lights for pedestrians, no one takes notice and will not stop for pedestrians. You cannot wait for a scooter or vehicle to allow you to go across, we would still be standing on the first street crossing.

We had a nice walk around the lake. Near the tourist office there were a few display boards showing what they want to do to improve this area. Just like a Community Improvement Plan in Ontario.

They are planting flowers ready for the Lunar New Year. I saw the strangest flower bed, Poinsettias and Geraniums in the same bed! A Christmas plant and a summer plant in the same bed.

Ralf and I took a lot of photos, unfortunately Ralf is still getting used to the iPad and when he wanted to delete a couple of the photos he actually deleted all of the photos on his card. He was really annoyed.

A strange thing happened to me as we walked around. I was looking at the flower beds and this young girl came up to me. I thought she wanted to take a photo of the flowers but she indicated that she wanted a photo of me. She put her arm around my waist, smiled at me and then pointed to her boyfriend who took a photo. No idea why!

For lunch we had baguettes, with meat and vegetables and a beer each for the grand price of $5.25 CAD.

We arrived back at the hotel about 4:00 p.m. and Ralf tried to get the air conditioning to work. It wouldn’t work. He went down to reception. The staff at the hotel are young Vietnamese and are very keen to help. First one guy comes up to our room, presses all the buttons on the remote “No its not working” then another guy comes up to our room, presses all the buttons on the remote “ No its not working” by the time it was all done and dusted five different guys had comet to the room to try the remote. One guy did bring a ladder and opened up the face of it, closed it all back up. We were moved to another room, which is very nice.

Tonight we went to the restaurant down the street for Pho, the staff here recommend it as the best place to eat Pho in the neighbourhood. Pho is a traditional Vietnamese meal, it starts with a tasty broth, add a good helping of rice noodles, beef and vegetables. We thought it was going to be a fancy restaurant, but it was a small hole in the wall place that was packed with Vietnamese and a few tourists. There were little kiddie seats on the side walk and inside were about four tables that sat about six people and one long communal table in the middle that would seat about 20.

Ralf ordered the Pho while I found us a seat and we ate with chopsticks and a spoon. It was very tasty and filling. Dinner cost a grand total of $5.80, we had two beers at the little place across the street for $2.32.

January 17, 2016

We were up before sunrise today, this is the first time I have seen 5:00 a.m. in a very long time. The flight was due to leave at 11:30, which means check-in at 8:30, leave Barrie at 7:00 a.m. However, with the bikes to check-in and possibly bad weather or traffic delays I had booked the taxi/limo for 6:00.

The taxi driver called to say he was going to be 10 minutes late, I knew I had planned properly. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on which way you look at it, there were no traffic delays and the limo had a 407 transponder which means he was able to miss the 400/401 interchange which is usually the cause for traffic delays.

We were at the airport at 7:30! The bikes were checked in and we were on our way through security by 8:00, a little too early. The check-in assistant appeared to be reading all of the policies for shipping bikes, then informed me that we would have to pay $50.00 for each bike. I could have told her that.

The plane needed de-icing which was really neat to watch.

As we were heading down the runway after de-icing, the captain announced that we were just waiting for the runway to be checked as the plane in front of us may have hit some birds. I really did not want to hear that, as we had just watched the movie “Sully” – the pilot who landed the plane on the Hudson River – because of bird strikes!! As mentioned before I hate flying and I must admit I was scared as we trundled down the runway, I figured this was going to be the end of us. I hung onto Ralf’s arm and watched the wing until we were safely in the sky.

The flight was good although very long – 13.5 hours. The food was not too bad, but we didn’t get wine with the meal. They scooted past us and didn’t offer us anything to drink.   I wanted Ralf to chase the woman down to bring me my wine, but he wouldn’t. Apparently they had to restock and came around again after we had eaten. Give me wine and no-one gets hurt.

I watched three movies (Bridgett Jones Baby – good, Jungle Book – excellent and Secret Life of Pets – should have slept instead of watching that one). I attempted to sleep, but was unsuccessful. Ralf also had a movie fest (Jack Reacher – along the lines of Jason Bourne, Jungle Book – excellent animation, Florence Foster Jenkins – fast forwarded through the singing and Tooth Fairy – silly, fun not Julie Andrews best movie).

When we arrived in Incheon Airport we quickly and efficiently headed to get our boarding pass and then had a 3 hour lay over in a huge airport. As we were heading up to get our boarding passes there was some very soothing music being played. The airport has two areas of “cultural interest” music is played and displays of artwork and silk.

The instrument was played by pushing down on the strings and crossing a \”violin\” bow across the strings at the same time.  The lady was singing, but I think she got a bit ahead of the musician as she kept watching him all the time.

We saw this procession as we were heading towards our gate. Apparently, it was a funeral procession.  I am not sure in hindsight we should have taken photos, but other people were doing it as well.

We did not have any Korean Won and cannot spend any money, but Ralf went window shopping as we will be leaving through this airport in April.

The flight from Korea was delayed and we arrived in Hanoi about 30 minutes late. The bikes were already waiting for us after we had cleared passport control, but then we had to wait another half an hour for the other two bags to arrive.

We chatted to an American who is staying in Vietnam for a year teaching English.

When we exited Customs we spotted our taxi driver, who was horrified to see our two bike boxes. He chatted excitedly to another taxi driver and then took us outside. He frantically got on the phone to Hanoi Brothers to tell them about the bike boxes. I had of course informed them every time I emailed them that there would be bicycles. The poor fella who came to pick us up only had a regular car. After much phone calling and using google translate (on his phone not the iPad) he told us that they were arranging for one of the big airport taxi vans to pick us up.

About half an hour later, he shows up we loaded the bikes and bags and headed to the Hanoi Brothers Inn.

“Gary” registered us, gave us a cup of tea, a map of Hanoi and told us the best places to see while we are here.  All we really wanted to do was go to bed, but he had his routine to go through and we sat patiently listening.

Exhausted we went to our room at 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday January 18, 2017!  I quickly prepared for bed and was asleep in about 2 seconds.

Vietnam is 12 hours ahead of Toronto, total travel time from door to door was 30 hours.