Diary of an Internet Addict

As I write this, I am on a sleeper train to Sapa, Vietnam. But, be back to that in a minute.

We had pondered a while where to go, for this trip, particularly since Scoot had a sale, and it was a very good one. In the end, we settled on Hanoi.

While we were slated to fly at 955, we eventually took off closer to 1030 due to traffic air congestion.

There’s no entertainment system, so I bored myself to sleep in short order.

Except for a some slight turbulence, the flight was mostly uneventful.

We took Grab from airport to Hanoi Gratitude Hotel, Hoan Kim (Old Quarter), and it costed us around 300,000 Vietnam Dong (VD). You can try Klook airport transfer. We ended up checking in around 3pm. The short stay at Hotel Gratitude costed us 600K VD, which was the cost of a night’s stay?

Lunch was a sumptuous spread costing around at PK Spice Restaurant. A variety of dishes costed around 700,000 VD.

The rest of the evening was shopping at Aeon Mall which was around 15 mins’ drive, but ended up almost half an hour because of the traffic congestion. Getting from the mall to back to Hoan Kiem was a nightmare…we wanted to take Grab back as well, but the driver 1) couldn’t find us 2) couldn’t understand us.

We were sweating, and flustered by the time we got back to the hotel. We had a quick freshening up at the hotel before we checked out and headed to the train station. We reached just in the nick of time for train check-in.

We wanted to book Sapaly Express which had received the higher end of good reviews from a mix of reviews. But we were set on Chapa Express, instead. I was initially skeptical, but reviews seemed to point that it is fairly decent and, there’s a complimentary transfer to the hotel we would be staying in Sa Pa, so I’d figure, sure, why not, right?

On board, the person who had led us from the station to the train briefed us on the toilets (at each end of the carriage) and a washing area. She then offered us hot drinks (coffee or tea, complimentary).

So far pretty decent, except for a slight smell in the upper bunk, which I spritzed away with essential oil.

Shall sleep now…

tip: Google Translate is your frenemy.