Day 4 Singapore - Ho Chi Minh - Hanoi

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We got up early today to make our way by mini-van to the airport to fly out to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam as part of our next leg of the holiday. It was an early check in at the airport so had to leave the hotel by 5am.

Was a short flight to Ho Chi Minh around 1hr 40mins and as we landed we had to get our Visa’s processed. That took around 30mins to do which was great. We were expecting it to take longer than that. We headed out of the gates and out of the International Airport. It was a short walk down to the Domestic Airport. This is where we were boarding our flight to Hanoi with Vietnam Airlines…our flight was at 11:45am so we had a look in the shops, grabbed some lunch and waited for our flight.

We boarded our plane and made our way to Hanoi, which was around 2hrs north. We got picked up from the airport by our train travel guides van and made our way through the outskirts of Hanoi and into the Old Quarter in the heart of Hanoi. It was quite overwhelming the amount of farms and other fruit and veggies that were growing everywhere off the side of the road. It is like they have been there for years and they have put roads straight through the farm lands...

We drove through the hustle and bustle of the locals on motorbikes and cars and pushbikes and were just were blown away. This place it is full on! You don’t drive here unless you know where you’re going. We arrived at our train guides office and were lucky enough to leave our bags with them while we headed out to have a look around. We walked around Hoan Kiem Lake. We found the entrance to the temple on Lake Hoan Kiem where locals and tourist go to pray and give thanks. It was very calming to see and walk around and have a look. We then got tickets to the water puppet show which sounds funny but was truly amazing to watch. It was a highlight so far on our trip. We made our way to a café and had dinner then walked back to tour office to grab our bags. They took us by mini-van to the train station where we met up with other backpackers and travelers who were waiting to catch the overnight train to Sapa…

The train was cozy and we settled into our bunks and made our way out of Hanoi and into the hills towards Sapa was a bit bumpy at first but we all fell asleep fairly quickly.

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