Dien Bien – Hai Phong, Day 2: Hanoi To Dien Bien

After having breakfast at the hotel, my sis and I checked out early and walked to the nearest bus stop. Just when we reached the Gia Lam bus station then we realized that we should have taken the other way around. So we paid an extra bus fare to reach the My Dinh bus station.

Sadly, the earliest coach from Hanoi to Dien Bien only departed from 4:30 PM, so we had to stay at the station among the overwhelming solicitation of many companies. To my surprise, they offered a better price than the one the station sold.

After phở (noodles) lunch, we decided to get on a Thong Lan coach as the station sold tickets from this company. This was my first time experiencing a sleeper bus and it was kind of fun at first, scary at later. They let more people in than the number of beds, so there were people lying on the way.

Today, we had to endure smelly men who smoke a lot, at the bus station and stops on the go. It was cold and windy, and the smell traveled far. It was terrible for my sis and I. We always tried to hide from the smoke.

Dien Bien – Hai Phong, Day 1: Hanoi

My plane took off from the Tan Son Nhat Airport a lil bit later than expected. Though my flight was with VietJetAir, I went to the Hanoi‘s center by the JetStar bus. I checked in the Hanoi Sports Hotel (the one I stayed on the last trip to Sapa and Tam Coc) and took a leisure walk around the Old Quarter while waiting for my sis’s flight to come. She booked the tickets late so her flights didn’t depart at the same time with mine.

While walking around, I found out that I never set foot into the Bach Ma Temple (because it might have been it was closed before). This time, I saw a couple of Westerners walking inside so I followed them.
I was starved when my sis came to the hotel. I had chatted with a friend from HCMC who happened to be in Hanoi too, so the three of us met for “chả cá Lã Vọng” together. To my great disappointment, it appeared that this fish paste dish was worse and more expensive than before. The environment was bad, either.

We stopped by Hang Bac Temple and luckily, they let us in (at 9:30 PM or so). They were so nice.
Then we headed to the night market, and had some “nem chua rán” near the hotel before going to sleep.

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