Arriving in Hanoi

We left for Hanoi from Okinawa around noon on Wednesday. We had a 4 hour layover in Seoul (a wonderful airport by the way) and finally made our arrival at the Hanoi (Noi Bai) airport around 2330. It was a long day, and needless to say, we were all tired. After a bit of time it took to acquire our Visa's for tourism, we finally get out of all the lines to get our baggage.

Much to our surprise, our baggage STILL wasn't all out (note above: it did take some time for the Visa information). We get over to the baggage claim and the conveyor belt is stopped and there are 4 men with a section of the belt taken apart (if you look closely behind Olivia in this photo, you can see them). I felt a little bad about taking a photo of it, so I posed her. Anyway, it was a bit comedic (since a number of people were just standing around awaiting their bags while the guys worked. In the end, it started up again and all was well.

We were met at the airport by our guide ( _ ) She seemed nice (although we were tired, so anyone would have worked by this time). We drove to our hotel (about 30 minutes from the airport) and got a glimpse of Hanoi at night.

We stayed at the Melia Hotel in Hanoi. As we pulled up our guide told us that it was also housing a number of delegates from the worlds ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) conference. That might have been a nice thing to know before we pulled into the hotel. We then had to check all of our bags through security. Nice.

ANYWAY - we got into our room. 5th floor, lovely suite. They had given us an extra bed and a crib (which Alessandra looked at and said "who is that for?") and after some frustrating conversation with the front desk about needing to switch out beds and a nice bath in the giant tub... we all went to bed....