sayajay.net

The past few days, I've been slacking in keeping this blog up to the date, so I've been keeping a bullet list of the most salient talking points.

How utterly organized I'm being.

I thought about just using the list as an outline where I'd eventually replace each point, but I think, for the sake of posterity that I will share said list:

• HND to Hanoi at 5am.
• tripping through terminals at hanoi
• sketchy pickup and ride through HCMC to hotel
• meetup with Sean / Khanh
• dinner in an alley way?
• Wandering. Patches and stuff
• propaganda and ice cream

HND to Hanoi at 5 AM

My flight leaving Tokyo was at 8:55 AM. If I take the usual stance that 3 hours before a flight is a good amount of time, than I should arrive at 5:55 AM. Considering it was about a 45 minute ride, that means I'd have to leave my hotel around 5 AM.

No.

Luckily, jet-lag was still slightly on my side, so getting up early has been relatively easy to do these past few days. I think I was on the Monorail to Haneda airport just a touch before 6 AM. But the subway was still crazy crowded. I should really never underestimate the amount of people in Tokyo.

I got my bag check, visa issues sorted out, and got my boarding passes. Everything seemed fined, mostly. I then I got to Hanoi

Tripping through terminals at Hanoi airport

I learned that Hanoi has a domestic and international terminal. They are not connected, and I had to take a shuttle bus, which swept me away across a freeway through some jungle. Alright.

I walk into the domestic terminal, and there's just people and monitors everywhere. The monitors are listing flight numbers and check in counters (which are numbered). Only one problem: my flight is not listed.

So I start wandering around, looking for an information counter, only to find a sign that says, "temporarily closed. Be back in 10 minutes", which might as well just say, "closed forever", since I had to be on an airplane in about 90 minutes.

Then I wander around and find there's another side of the airport which has a different set of check in counters. I look there. My flight is not listed there either. I start googling stupid stuff like, "can't find check in counter at Hanoi airport", and nothing seems to show up. It's then that I notice that the terminal has a third side, which has another set of check in counters. I go there and see Vietnam Air, all over the place, which is the airline that I'm looking for -- but my flight is still not listed.

I go over the boarding pass, and that's when I realize: the flight number on the ticket that I booked, and the flight number on my boarding pass were different. Not only that, but the different flight number on my boarding pass was at a later time. Like, what the actual futz pocket!

It's also worth mentioning that the airplanes in Vietnam thus far, do not connect to the terminal. You step out of the plane, right onto the tarmac and they take you to the terminal via bus.

While I'm sitting in the terminal, it's then that I feel like: wow, I'm in another country that isn't Japan. My paranoia gave me a perhaps unfounded image of a den of thievery, but this airport is just like any airport that I've been too. It's just the people are different. The hustle of selling duty-free junk is still around. The restaurants in the airport still looked as awful as any airport restaurant.

a sketchy airport pickup

The other issue I was worried about was that I had reserved a driver to come get me from the airport. And I was going to be extremely late. But it turns out that they had waited for me.

Customer service is definitely not like Japan. Not many places are. I just waved to the guy holding the sign, who seemed to have a rather tedious grasp on the English language, and he called a driver to come over -- the driver pulls up in a beat up Toyota corolla hatchback (or maybe a Yaris?). Definitely not as nice as I would have expected, but functional to say the least.

And then we go. To where, I did not know, but definitely was hoping that it was to my hotel and not to an undisclosed kidnapping location.

Luckily, everything went well, I checked in to my hotel, which had a very musky, earthy, smell -- and that's when I noted that the hotel had two wings: a fancy luxury wing, and the old "ancient wing". As it turns out, I'm in the less-fancy ancient wing. No matter though -- because I had air conditioning and that's all that matters in this Saigonese weather.

Enter Sean, Khanh, and the rest of my evening.

Eventually, I meet up with Sean and Khanh.

We cross the streets. Not too bad, honestly -- I was expecting it to be a little more daunting, but not too bad.

We have dinner. But how we got there was more interesting. We wander through a rather inconspicuous alley way, up some stairs, and suddenly there's an entire restaurant hiding in the back.

And then we start wandering around a little bit -- which was definitely for my benefit, I think. My observations about Vietnam so far have included:

• when riding motorbikes, people who ride in the rear don't really hold on to anything.
• "sidewalk cafes". There are places on large sidewalks that have these plastic mats or newspapers, and people will literally just sit down on the pavement, and hang out -- just as if they were in a proper cafe. I can definitely understand the appeal of sitting outside, with this sweltering heat. But I also understand the appeal of sitting inside with AC as well. So these sidewalk cafes are set up by little old ladies who will bring you drinks, if you wish.
• motorbikes are obviously used by most people. Every now and then, I'd see a guy sitting on the sidewalk between a bunch of motorbikes, just hanging out. It turns out that these guys are like "parking attendants". It was interesting because, at first glance, it didn't seem like there was any rhyme or reason to how people parked. There are definitely some streets (thinking about some side streets in Chinatown), where there is definitely no system to how people park.

We ended the night with dessert at propaganda cafe