My first blog is traditionally written by my Mr Angry persona and is usually an in-depth moan about our terrible travel travails, frustrations of waiting around, late flights, missed connections, British Airways reaching new heights of incompetence, lost baggage etc.  

Imagine my outrage then as I wake up this morning and have nothing to complain about. It was a perfect journey. 

Everything ran like clockwork, even BA was on time, their service excellent and all connections were straightforward. 

The only potential for hassle could have been immigration at Hanoi where the queues were vast, but Brigitte spotted an empty lane  reserved for diplomats so she just strode through ‘diplomatically’ (Brigitte has lots of amazing qualities but I would never put diplomacy amongst them 🤣!) and, once I made sure she wasn’t being marched straight to the Hanoi Hilton (look it up kids- we’re visiting there later today) I followed her through.

Once you arrive at Hanoi airport you scan your passport, it takes your photo and then each access point just scans your face and the gates open. Very efficient.

Unfortunately, when it was my turn, each point kept asking me to ‘Please remove your mask’ Now I realise I’d been travelling for over 24 hours but flippin heck! – did my face really look that bad?

Apple AirTags take care of baggage anxiety as you know when your case is about to pop into view and then it was straight through customs, despite me carrying more medications than the average pharmaceutical factory, and out we walked into the very pleasant tropical Hanoi heat.

We were met by our lovely guide for Hanoi, who is called Queen and who’s driver whisked to our hotel in Hanoi’s old quarter whilst providing a Vietnam history lesson along the way, extolling the benefits of Communism in Vietnam of which I’m sure I’ll cover in a later blog once I fact check her 😀.

First impressions? Hanoi seems a beautiful, vibrant, modern, clean city. I was ignorantly expecting a conflagration of madness, shanty areas, dirt, smell, poverty but our 40 minute drive was either skilfully executed to avoid all that or it really is a lovely city. 

Strange things..

You’ll all know by now that I enjoy spotting weird things on our journeys so, Strange things number one was that we noticed lots of people crouched down on their haunches around the city. On escalators, on the pavements, outside shops. At first we were a bit grossed out, thinking they were emptying themselves 😱, then we thought they were maybe begging but no, apparently it’s a comfortable position people here simply fold themselves into to relax and watch the world go by. Personally I’d never be able to get up again.

After arriving at the Hotel, being greeted with fruit and drinks and generally pampered, we went for a stroll through the local, busy streets, found a tiny cafe/restaurant and  had a fabulous meal of many courses of fresh food and blew millions of our Dongs (first Dong joke guys!) only to work out that it was around £20 including a beer and tips!

We then went for an hour-long back and foot massage to sooth our weary travel bodies  (there’s a beautiful massage shop every two meters) so another few zillion Dongs gone (There’s 30,000 Dongs to the Pound  27,000/€) and then home to bed with nothing to complain about whatsoever. Outrageous!