Traveling to Vietnam
Posted July 30
It was time to say goodbye to Luang Prabang and to Laos. I had grown accustomed to the laid-back and quieter place in SE Asia, but it was time to move on.
Getting ready for my flight to Hanoi, I knew from its reputation that it is a large, loud, in-your-face, kind of city. Pretty much the opposite of Luang Prabang.
Getting to the airport with plenty of time (still a little shell-shocked from my departure in Seattle) I was checked in and in the waiting area of the Luang Prabang airport in no time.
My Vietnam Airlines plane waiting to fly to Hanoi
An oddity about the Luang Prabang airport is that it is just a single long (OK, short) terminal with four gates. That’s not the oddity, the odd thing is that in order, the gates are numbered 2, 1, 4, 3. They’re all on the same side of the terminal, so it’s not that there’s odd-even numbering happening, they’re just not in order.
Anyway, when boarding was called for my flight, I looked around and saw that the place looked pretty empty. I got to board first as the only Skyteam Elite passenger, and once things got rolling I figured out that the plane was going to be almost empty!
If there was any hope that meant the passport check lines in Hanoi would be short, that wasn’t so. It took an hour to queue and get approved to enter Vietnam. It would have taken even longer if I had not been pre-approved for a Visa. The visa-on-arrival line was another hour.
Very empty flight to Hanoi
Finally, getting to my hotel, the question of how to spend my first night in Hanoi needed to be answered. As it turns out, my hotel isn’t very far from the infamous Train Street, where the train makes its way through a neighborhood with no spacing between the tracks and the houses.
Of course now it’s a tourist trap with overpriced restaurants and beer establishments. So I went. Overpriced beer in Vietnam means spending $2 instead of $1.
It was interesting watching the game of the police trying to enforce a minimum distance and the bar owners moving their tables and chairs away from the tracks a few millimeters, only to move them back and have the police yell at them again.
The train itself was fun to watch. There’s a video below.
The infamous Train Street
Walking back to the hotel I ended up stopping for dinner at a small street side spot that serves Bun Cha. It’s a dish of pork based soup, with noodles, egg rolls, and the ever-present pile of herbs and greens. It’s sort of like a do-it-yourself bowl of Pho, or maybe kind of like a Vietnamese version of Tsukamen.
It was good, although I think a bit overpriced (confirmed by the hotel clerk) at 110,000 VND - a bit over $4.
All in all, a good start to the adventure of Vietnam.
Bun Cha, pork based soup with noodles and egg rolls on the side.