Way to the land of rice and mountains

“Cheap tickets!”, this is how most of my plans for trips come up. This year, my dream was to travel farther then the Europe.

This time, I discovered cheap tickets to the land of rice and mountains – Vietnam. What do I mean by cheap? We are travelling with Emirates and the price was about 450 EUR, not bad, hm? I have been lured by Vietnam for couple of years, so I didn’t wait for long and bought them. The only downside was, that the flight wasn’t from Prague, but Budapest, but who cares?

But what now? We have tickets. But what do we need to arrange before summer and what to see overe there? We decided for nothern Vietnam, because we prefer mountains over crowded beaches. Where exactly we are heading? Wait for the upcoming articles.

We had to arrange just couple of things. Vaccination is the first thing you should look up. We opted for abdominal typhus, rabies and meningitis. Second important thing you should look up as soon as possible is a visa, at least if you want to stay for longer than 15 days. In case of Vietnam, visas are not enough, you have to have an approval letter as well. Count with approx. 10 EUR for the letter and then 25 USD for visas, which you’ll obtain at the airport.

Ferenc Liszt airport Budapest

We packed couple of T-shirts, raincoat and first aid kit. All of my things under 45 liters. And half of my backpack was empty! Hurrai! Couple of hours in the bus to Budapest, short walk around the city. The flight to Dubai was faster than the bus journey to Budapest!

Emirates

During our second flight – Dubai-Hanoi, we had a short layover in Burma. I have to admit. I hours in the plane was a bit too long. We took a minibus from the airport to the city centre of Hanoi, because we figured out that it’s easier to haggle with a minibus driver than driver. And haggling is a necessity, you have to haggle all the time and everywhere. And we met other Czechs there! What a coincidence!

My first impression from Hanoi was “IT’S CRAZY!”. Honking cars everywhere and little scooters intertwining between them. Traffic lights? Yes, they work. But noone seems to acknowledge they exist. Zebra crossings? Forget about it. Just pray and slowly walk into that chaos, you can only hope someone doesn’t kill you.

Surprise, surprise, noone in the hotel didn’t speak any English, eventhough they clearly states on the website, that they do. Whatever, we just put our bags into our room and went right back into the rainy Hanoi to buy a SIM card. We picked Viettel SIM, and after an hour in the shop, we got it. For 3,5 EUR 3 GB of data. Not bad. Just be careful and bring your passport with you. No passport, no SIM.

After 30 hours on the way, we used all our strength for buying and eating grilled duck and fell into bed.

Now, I’m sitting (or rather lying) in the bus, which si taking us to the north. Where exactly?