Idiots at the HK airport

Yeh, we almost lost the whole friggin' flight to Hanoi because of some over-enthusiastic flight-check-in attendants. We were at the HK airport well before we were due. So, after changing some dollars to Vietnamese dongs and having queued to the attendants we were faced with a problem, according to the attendants. Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs states that Finnish citizens can stay in Vietnam 14 days without a visa. And had it been needed, it would have been mentioned that a travel itinerary OUT OF the country was also needed. This wasn't the case so we felt everything's OK. The attendandts said to us, you need to have some kind of piece of information that states your departure out of Vietnam as well. And we had not booked or planned our trip further than Vietnam. So the situation was as follows: no travel itinerary or ticket out of Vietnam, no flight ticket to Vietnam.

We were given about an hour of time to sort it out. Nice. One option was to book a flight back to HK (that's all they could have done to help the case) from Vietnam, and if we had been let into Vietnam, we would have had to pay a penalty for reserving a flight and not using it. Not good. Other option would have been to miss the whole flight to Vietnam and make proper reservations for traveling out of Vietnam, thus losing the whole flight ticket to Vietnam.

We marched to the nearest benches and took our laptops out of their covers (mine is a Lotus Supermarket plastic bag, my airplane container for the laptop (and other hardware)) and hoped the airport WLAN would work. With Silja's laptop it worked better than on mine. Only hope was to book a flight (we decided it to be Hanoi - Luang Prabang) from some webpage and that they would send us a confirmation email of the booked flight within 30 minutes.. Quite hazardous. So we managed to reserve a flight, total cost for the two of us 219 pounds. There goes the savings.. They sent an automated response telling the details of the flight in the last moment, but not any actual confirmation mail (too little time). So, open MS Word and format a formal looking document with our flight details. Then off to the counter to pray the attendants they would give us our tickets with this pre-confirmation info. The guy was quite unsure so he called the Vietnam Airlines (the flight company we booked the flights) and was looking at us very suspiciously. He fetched the person in charge of the Vietnam Airlines check-in and they talked with each other. They demanded that we'd need some kind of flight serial number (which was not in any of our previous tickets, very weird). After some time, when it was about time we would have needed to be at the gate already boarding the plane, the attendants agreed on putting our luggage on board the plain and give us our tickets. We were like "thank you", and they warned us that we would have to get the confirmation mail before landing, because "the Vietnamese passport control persons would not stand any kind of delays or hassling".

So, at this point we had our tickets and our luggage on the way to the plane (although it was so late already that we were very sceptical whether they would ever make it to the plane in the first place) but were unsure whether we could access Vietnam or if we would need to be castaways in the no-man's-land of the Hanoi Airport. Silja sent some info to her friend back in Finland so she could check out Silja's mail and whether there would be some kind of a confirmation mail.

We started to run as fast as possible towards gate 30 (of course, as Lee Evans puts it, it was almost the last one of them, "I've never seen a gate 1") rushing through the airport. We got there, and the boarding was luckily just starting (a bit late I guess), so we got onto the plane.

Flight. Yes, now we're in Vietnam. We got to the customs. Abso-fuckin-lutely no problems. We got in without any hassle. So thank you airport attendants for making things as difficult as possible.

And now here at Hanoi Backpackers Hostel we see lot of travel agencies which are offering 20 dollar trips to luang prabang on bus. But hey, u can't book 'em from the Internet, so you'd first need to get into the country before reserving them. And we needed a flight out of Vietnam to get inside. So how fucked up is that?

Anyway, now we're here and enjoying the moped, scooter, motorbike and lorry infested traffic without any kind of rules. But it's not so bad, crossing roads is easy, people will dodge you if you just walk predictably and keep some kind of common sense when crossing the road. People are smiling a lot when I smile at them, and they are helpful. Even my camera could have been stolen had it not been for some sweet Vietnamese chick who patted me on my back and pointed at my camera, laying on the table where Silja and I just ate.

It's very moist, humid, hot, sweaty all the time. And it's winter here.

Oh yeah, we booked a trip to Ha Long bay with kayaking, boat trip, jumping into the water, going to some caves 'n' sleeping on some sea-faring ship. It's going to be great!

I'll get back to you when I have time, now it's time to do some BBQ here in the hostel (they have it 3 times a week) and after that do something daring.. It has something to do with snake blood and heart. You figure out the rest.

Kisses and hugs to all you wonderful people out there!

-Junnu