Day 1 – Hanoi

firstly gotta thank jincheng and weiqin for fetching us to the airport and staying with us till boarding time. they even carried our excess backpack home lol. thanks guys really appreciate it!

Van arrived later with her bombshell luggage (geez I’ll never forget this HAHA) and her cousin Sharon, and friend Pearl. and there were 22 others from NUS, NTU and NIE.

Ernest and Jude were the organizers, and Jude happens to be SK’s army bud! such a small world indeed haha. the 2 guys managed to catch up a lot. I must say it was fun travelling with new peeps, esp since all were about our age so it was fun to get along.

at the Hanoi airport

my first time taking budget air and it wasn’t bad at all, in fact there’s less lag time and faster check-in and check-out. figured that even if the cup noodles cost $5 on the plane, it’ll still be paying 1/3 the price of normal airline right? lol

we arrived at around 9pm viet time and took a chartered van to our hotel Blue Paradise, but unfortunately it was fully booked so we had to walk a few streets down to their sister hotel called IndoChina.

I must praise these 2 hotels, cos for the price we paid I really didn’t expect much out of the rooms. but they turned out to be huge and well furnished. haha but I forgot to snap pics, too tired. there were no lifts, so we girls had to climb up 8 floors to reach our secluded room.

Sunday was “night market” day so we were lucky to be able to experience the night life on the streets. of cos being the first time NOOBS, we were clutching onto our purses and handbags for dear life LOL. but after that night, I realized Vietnam is 10 times safer than my own hometown la. except the part about crossing roads lol.

we were told not to take the prices as they were, so me and van tried our bargaining skills. not easy at all, especially when they hardly speak English haha. we managed to bargain a purse from 65 000 dongs to 35000 D, but apparently that’s not good enough! but practise makes perfect, as you shall see later lol.

group pic!

since it was too late for restaurants, we settled for some cheap street hawker food like jagung, pork bun, sausages and coconut water. that pretty summed up our dinner that night, not filling at all lol.

SK and the 10 000D jagung!

marking our territory.

we found it strange that there were no dustbins on our way back, in fact there were no dustbins at the night market too. but we finally found it when we asked our hotel staff lol. as you can see, their dustbins are actually everywhere and anywhere.

okie fall-in time was 7am next morning for breakfast, and then it’s off to Halong Bay!