Hanoi-ing
Hanoi was moist, warm and a little bit irritable. The Vietnamese knew how to wrangle a couple of extra quid for little to no effort. In spite of our lack of staying in Vietnam they still wanted us to stump up for a Visa. This wouldn’t be such a ball ache if the money went on the service they provide in issuing you a visa. So we stood for about an hour in a cue luggage in tow hot sweaty and unable to go anywhere. I did however take this time to give my everything a modest wash, a wasted few minutes as sweat wouldn’t stop pouring from everywhere.
Eventually our time came round and we made our way out. We were to take an internal flight to Ho Chi Min city (a secret stop labeled only in our small print might I add). A baggage lady a representative of Vietnam Airways stood at the door of the Arrivals. She said we didnt have to check in but rather she could take them as they were already bound for Sydney. Several other passengers happily handed over our cases and so did we. When strolling past Check in many of the other Sydney passengers were checking in their luggage by hand. I’ve watched enough of The Real Hustle to feel a little giddy at the thought of leaving my bag with a complete stranger in a suit. Those two girls had not long been arrested in Peru, slight paranoia kicked in, my ass was grass as soon as I hit Oz.
Anyway naivety aside we had decided to make our way out to Hanoi and see some sights in our 10 hour stop over. Meeting a couple of the younger passengers in the hour long visa cue wait we tempted ourselves a visit into Hanoi centre. Taxis are cheap and 5 quid can get you to just about the moon and back. Understanding there is a set price for taxi trips and we were not to be duped into anything else we attempted to explain the price we expected with one of the drivers. There is no luck in trying to negotiate with a man that hasn’t the foggiest what your saying. After many attempts at speaking louder and pointing at things I gave up. It was easy enough to be driven to somewhere you didn’t know and being dumped there, however the chances of four non Vietnamese talking Brits getting back to the airport could have been a tricky situation. We resigned ourselves to beer and grub in the airport restaurant.
Now to describe Hanoi airport is this
London Tube Station on a Saturday with the population of London on top of the population of a small country trying to get through Piccadilly station.
Ankles were targets for baggage trollies everyone is in everybody’s way apparently. Pushing, shoving, hustle, bustle and a humidity you could cut with a butter knife we scrambled through for food and beer. On the plus side at 5″3′ I eventually felt like I was finally the average height.
Fed and watered me and Kate made our way to departures lounge falling asleep on each other. We curled up and slept. Heaven knows what time had passed until we were shaken by one of the passengers we had met who was concerned we might miss our flight. And thank the lord she did I was stone cold out of my head asleep and so was Kate we both have a small reputation for missing flights and we could have spent a day asleep at this point.
All aboard we settled for the next 2 hours all I was concerned about was the film I would watch Kate was fast asleep.
Take off for Ho Chi Min
Jack and Kate in Oz 
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