hanoi | setiawanphoto

After the flight delay at the Siem Reap International Airport, we finally left on our flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. We arrived in Hanoi more than two hours after the scheduled arrival time. It was pretty late in the evening by then, so it did not take long for us to get through immigration and wait for our luggage. I had requested a pickup service through the hotel where we’re staying in the Old Quarter part of Hanoi. I was a little worried that because our flight was delayed we would miss the pickup. However, thankfully the driver actually patiently waited for us, and we were able to locate him when we exited the airport.

The drive from the Hanoi Noi Bai Airport to the Old Quarter took about twenty minutes or so. Hanoi seemed quite more modern than Phnom Penh, but not as developed as Bangkok. When we got closer to the Old Quarter we saw what we read in the guidebooks: narrow streets and very dense areas. It was weekend evening, so there were still quite a lot of activities out on the street.

When we arrived at our hotel, the Hanoi Serenity Hotel, we were welcomed by the young lady at the front desk that doubled up as the concierge and also a tour business. She gave us our room assignment, and it was on the fifth floor of the building. There was no elevator to go up, so she had one of the hotel staff members helped us with our luggage to go to our room. Originally we were planning on at least getting a dinner at a restaurant in Hanoi for that night. But it was close to 11 pm by the time we settled in our room, and since we’re not even familiar with the area near the hotel and we had a long day following, we decided to just call it a night.

In the morning, we got up pretty early, and we went down to the ground floor to a breakfast area at the back of the hotel. There they had complimentary breakfast made fresh to order. We looked at the menu, and I ordered scrambled eggs and bacon. The breakfast items were pretty much like what I expected, though it was served with a baguette. Similar to Cambodia, some of the French colony influences remained in the culture, including the use of baguette for sandwiches or as part of a meal. The baguette in Vietnam seemed to be lighter and more airy than the French baguette I had elsewhere.

Along with the meal, we could also make our own coffee serving. This became the favorite way to start the day for Kristi and me… making a nice cup of hot Vietnamese coffee mixed with condensed milk (cà phê sữa nóng). After the nice meal and coffee, we’re ready to start our day exploring Hanoi. Technically we were checking out from our room that morning as we would be going to Sapa that night, but the lady at the hotel front desk was nice enough to allow us to leave our luggages in our room, and she said they would bring those down to the ground floor and store them for us while we went out and about in the city, and we could just pick up the luggages before we leave in the evening.

Here was the nice breakfast I had that morning, the scrambled eggs, bacon, and baguette.

After our visit to the Bakong temple outside Siem Reap, our tour guide Vanna and driver Hour took us to the Siem Reap International Airport to catch our continuing flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. For this leg of the trip, we decided to fly Vietnam Airlines as they were the only airline that flew direct from Siem Reap to Hanoi. Our other options for that day were either flying AirAsia with transit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, or Bangkok Airways with transit in Bangkok, Thailand. Both options would essentially require us to leave early in the morning and travel the whole day, and we would risk getting stranded if for whatever reason we couldn’t make the connecting flight. So we didn’t want to take a chance, and decided to go with the Vietnam Airlines option. For that day, there were two flights we could consider, and we decided to take the earlier flight so we could get to Hanoi earlier in the evening, and also to have a fall back option in case there is anything wrong with the scheduled flight. When we booked the flight, we found out that the only seats available were in business class. We decided to go with those even though obviously they were pricier than the economy class, as the business class price was still within our budget and making the schedule was important to us given what we had planned the next few days in Vietnam.

When we arrived at the Siem Reap International Airport, the check in process was quite smooth and nice as we could go through the business class line. When we got to the counter, however, we found out that our flight was delayed by at least an hour. Not a good news to hear, but since we’re flying business class, we were given vouchers that would allow us access to use the Executive Lounge at the Siem Reap International Airport to wait for our flight.

Another thing we learned at check in time was that there was a USD $25 airport tax per person that we had to pay to depart from Siem Reap. We had that taken care of by the time we reached the security check area, but we had to wait for few minutes as a group of Japanese tourists that were in front of us reached the front of the line and found out about the airport tax there. Since they didn’t know before hand, they tried to argue with the officer at the security checkpoint to no avail. Fortunately we were not in a big hurry as our flight was delayed anyway, so waiting for the argument to finish didn’t have any negative impact to our plan.

We went to the Executive Lounge, and it was pretty nice to relax there and waited for our flight. They had complimentary snacks, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks available for the guests, and the seating area was quite comfortable as well.

We ended up spending more than two hours there until our flight was finally ready to go. Ironically the other Vietnam Airlines flight to Hanoi ended up leaving within ten minutes to our flight’s departure time.

The actual flight to Hanoi was about two hours, and it was quite a pleasant flight. We had a nice light dinner on the way there; it was pretty good but nothing especially memorable; they served westernized dish with some touch of Vietnamese/Asian flavors, clearly considering the typical western travelers who go on this particular route.

The photo below was taken while we were waiting at the Executive Lounge for our flight. You can see the nice ambience inside the Executive Lounge. I guess this was what we ended up paying extra for.