Korea to Viet nam

Flying in with China Eastern Airlines was fun and there were some surprises along the way.

We left Korea using the train. It was a fairly early start with a quick visit to the post office to send some items back to the US. That too was pretty straightforward with the packaging materials at hand and a lovely Korean postoffice clerk to help us through the process. She also reminded me that sending our 17 year old Japanese whisky would not be possible. Disappointing but to be expected, besides the upside was that we'd be able to drink it sooner rather than later.



The trip to the airport is fairly straightforward, with line 5 going to Gimpo airport and then a transfer to using a private train to Incheon AIrport. Incheon is certainly worth a mention. For the past 6 years consecutively it has won the accolade of being the world's best airport. We didn't see everything, but I can say it is certainly very impressive with tennis courts, spa, swimming pool and countless restaurants and shopping. It is also a very impressive structure resembing a giant, but architecturally eyecatching aircraft hanger. Dinner before the flight was a goodbye to Korea with our last Korean dish being of the noodly ricey kind.
The flight was pretty good, nothing so different about flying on a domestic chinese flight than flying on a domestic US or European flight....oh, except they do actually feed you, they feed you a real meal, a meal which is satisfying and relatively tasty. Perhaps most surprising about the tasty part was that it was on a 90 minute flight. The service was excellent, the english from the flight attendants was also very good, easy to understand.
Landing at Shanghai airport to a 4 1/2 hour layover gave us enough time to check the place out thoroughly. I've got to say, we were very impressed again. A modern engineering marvel with an enormous suspended ceiling, again similarities to an aircraft hanger, but this time the effect of the elaborate strut and cable arrangement gave for a dramatic effect.


The facilities were also first rate with high end shopping available and a variety of restaurants. What was perhaps most surprising though was the cost. If we thought Japan was pricey then Shanghai Airport was a showcase of wealth. The restaurant we ate in was not bad, but at $90 a bit of a surprise given the simplicity of the meal. Don't order the nachos - a few tortilla chips with a small teaspoon sized amount of salsa - and that's it for $12.


Another measure of the cost index is the price of a single malt. When passing through Japan's duty free we were looking at roughly UK duty free prices, when passing through Korea's duty free we were looking at about 2/3rds of the UK price, when passing through US duty free you're looking at parity with the UK and when passing through Shanghai, duty free would about double to triple that of UK and US duty free goods. One thing that was remarkable though was the variety, both at Incheon and Shanghai. There were whiskies there that I have never seen, never knew existed, and represented the absolute cream of Scotch available. 50 year old's, exclusive blends, single malts that were of peculiar years or finishes. I was in heaven with a rather significant dash of purgatory (not enough money to buy and no way to send home to the collection).


The next portion of the flight over to Hanoi was a bit trickier. It was slated to be about 3.5 hours, food was not as good (I'm curious if this was because it had been prepared in China, not Korea), but the service was still a good few notches above that which the US tolerates. The flight itself was bumpy and due to a lightening storm between us and Hanoi we were forced to make a stop in Nanning in southern China. As a result of the time (2am) we were unable to disembark due to no staff in the terminal so Rin and I settled down for a snooze on the plane. The seat arms didn't raise so a spot on the floor was the next best option.

Around 4am we got the all clear to head off again. The short hop was only 30 minutes in the air and the landing was bumpy to say the least. What happened next was nothing short of painful. It appears that Hanoi airport had shut down for the night and we landed without anyone in the terminal knowing. Because of that we were stopped as we walked through. About 60 very tired, frustrated passengers being held at bay by one little Vietnamese lad with a radio. We were stalled without facilities or knowing what was goinig on for about 25 minutes. Interestingly, when we were allowed to pass about 6 gates opened up....really, one would have done a little earlier. Still, thankful to get through immigration and thankful for the visa's we'd applied for ahead of time it was time to figure out how to get to our hotel. (interestingly a bunch of other westerners did not have visa's and it looked like it was going to be tricky getting them at the airport given the frustrated gesticulations they were giving at the visa area and the very early start).

Getting to the airport proved a little fraught also, but the dollar shouted, so despite obtaining about 2,000,000 Dong at the airport ATM we bought our way into a taxi (kicking another customer out) for $20.....best $20 I've spent I'd say. The drive to the hotel was pretty hair raising. We were experiencing first hand the Vietnamese driving habit. The closest I can do is to say utter chaos in a self preserving way. If you are bigger, you have priority.
The taxi driver hoped out just before the tolls started and despite the quick flash through our minds of a hold up situation it was clear he just needed to go. On the drive the taxi weaved and beeped it's way past literally hundreds of motorbikes and mopeds, all with different cargoes, everything from hunks of freshly butchered cow and water buffalo to freshly cut, neatly stacked flowers and boxes of vegetables. The horn was used gratuitously, in part to say get out of the way, in part to alert sleepy eyed moped drivers that a $20 fare was coming through. The roads were not bad either, two laned for most of the way and relatively free from potholes. Certainly a step up from Bostonian and New York road surfaces though signing, lighting and any form of observed road rules were completely absent. Another example of this was a large HGV parked up in the breakdown lane, tarpaulin and hammock out it was either broken down or the driver decided a quick nap would be appropriate. What impressed Rin and I the most was not the crazy driving but how there were not more accidents. Despite the complete lack of observable rules, the Vietnamese are not without their road etiquette. I mentioned before about the "I am bigger than you" approach to road vehicles. But perhaps more understandably is that there is very little that can be done if there is an accident. In the west, if you have an accident where you can prove someone else at fault, an insurance company pays out and you get a repair. In Vietnam, not so. I'm not suggesting drivers and motorbike rides don't have insurance (they can't, there is no system for it) but the protection of personal property lends itself very carefully to the adversity of crashing into each other. It is also rare that an incident would involve calling plod. The way to sort out your differences in Vietnam is tete a tete and sometimes hand to hand combat.