No one can accuse this trip of being plane.
10th January 2020
Now no one likes being woken up at 3am no matter the circumstances, I am no different it was a shock when the alarm went off and Dan expected me to function like a normal human being, however the day was finally here and our life was being completely uprooted, admittedly by our own doing.
My dad (who had unwittingly agreed to drive us to the airport at 3:30 in the morning) however was even less impressed than I was!
Dan, being the morning person that he is, managed to convince me that I did in fact still want to go and to get in the car.
At Manchester Airport everything ran smoothly and sooner than expected we were sat with a fry up, that cost half our monthly wage, eyeing up the pints.
Because we are skint we booked a flight that meant we had to change planes in Doha, this however seemed to work relatively well because it meant we got to stretch our legs a little and discover that the only shop we can afford to even look in the window of at Doha Airport is WHSmiths (which was nice to see there). In all seriousness, Doha Airport is posh!!
(we’re not sure why)
No matter how big and fancy an airport is though, you always get to that point where you’re half asleep on some ridiculously uncomfortable chairs dreading the next 8 hour flight and trying to work out whether you should be sleeping or forcing yourself to stay awake.
The flight from Doha to Hà Nội was bumpier, now I wouldn’t say I’m a nervous flyer, I just don’t like the take off, the landing or if it’s bumpy. That meant this flight wasnt exactly ideal. Dan was on some kind of series marathon and so was perfectly content.
Flying at night really can be beautiful though
As we began to near Hà Nội the turbulence settled down and we got to watch the most spectacular sunrise and the fact we were on the other side of the world finally started to settle in
(and last because we’re not alive at that time of the morning)
When we got to Hà Nội our biggest worry-when I say ‘our’ relating to a worry it’s pretty much mine as Dan is the most relaxed person ever- was making sure Dan had a visa. I was sorted as I had to get mine from the vietnamese embassy in London. This cost me a crazy amount of money for a bit of paper but it did mean life was easy for me. However Dan was requested to get a visa on arrival, this turned out to be a quarter of the price mine was and to take literally no effort. I’m not bitter but I had stressed about this for the past month.
Finally through the immigration check point and collected our bags we were met by the lovely people at Fluent Education
Mini side note, check out how small our bags are for a year
When someone greets you at the airport when you have been travelling for 20 hours and you look like it, with a camera to photograph you, you can be enclined to dislike them. Especially when one of them tells you you look like shit, but we can promise you they are nice really.
Getting to the hotel was simple enough, if you ignore the vietnamese traffic. I won’t get started on that now but believe me there is a full post just on the roads over here.
The hotel was lovely, but the nap was even better!
B
Beth and Dan go to Vietnam 