Our day starts early, repacking bags and getting ready to head to the airport for our 10:50 flight to Singapore. Because the airport is so far away (even with the new road), we have to leave a little before 8 to be there on time. We decide to skip breakfast, simply because we’ve had quite enough food – plus I still have the bananas and oranges from the room to bring with us.
We head downstairs all ready to go, and decline breakfast, which really freaks out the staff. They do not like it when we don’t eat! But, finally, they relent and at least ply us with fresh passionfruit juice. As we sit in the breakfast area, efficient as always, the staff tells us not to rush, the car will be there soon, while they prepare our bill, and then give us a parting gift (two boxes -of tea- wrapped in newsprint with a large red bow)– to remember them by! How sweet!
Now that the ceremony is over, they announce the car is here (we think it was there all along, but they refuse to rush us!). Saying goodby, they all grasp you with both hands, thank you profusely and tell us to hurry back. Both the bell boy and one of the reception staff walk us out to the taxi, and after depositing into the car, they stand outside the door waving goodbye to us. OMG. It’s like saying goodbye to family. This is one of the many, many reasons we’d never even consider staying anywhere else in Hanoi. If we ever decide to come back – guaranteed, you know where we’ll stay.
We make it to the airport in plenty of time – that new road is a huge bonus. Wow, cuts off tons of time. We’ve booked an upgrade for our flight through Optiontown – this service that sells cut rate business class upgrades. You pay in advance, but they don’t guarantee you’ll get the seat. If there is space and you get it, you pay. If not, they refund your money. We figured, what the heck – it’s a 2 1/2 hour flight and might as well try it. We are successful and get our upgrade, but not the use of the business lounge before hand (somewhere online we thought we read that we did have access, but apparently not. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!). Anyway, no big deal, it’s 8:30 in the morning and we don’t really need more coffee or anything.
So we hang out in the gate area and pass the time people watching – which is always a sport. The plane is a little bit late, but we’re hoping we’ll make that up in flight. We’ve got a great hotel booked in Singapore with club level access, and our plans are to just hang out in the lounge for the evening. First to board, we hop into our Business class seats. Nice – wouldn’t this be great for long haul? Too bad Optiontown doesn’t offer services on those flights!
Service is great, drinks, real lunch of prawns of all things. Very good. Beer and wine up here – don’t know if this flight offered it in the back – but we’re good. As we get closer to Singapore, the skies start to darken. The forecast called for passing thunderstorms, and they are definitely out there – you can see the rain. We circle the airport for about 30-45 minutes, then start our descent. Landing gear down, we’re pretty low, when, whoosh, up we go – back into the sky.
Oh geez, here we go again! Pilot comes on and tells us we will not be landing at Singapore, we are diverting to Kuala Lumpur due to the storms. Bummer! We’re watching the club access diminish as the clock ticks down! But that’s minor compared to the folks in the next row. They are flying home to Australia tonight at 7:50 from Singapore. Or not!
We land in Kuala Lumpur with the pilot telling us the ground crew will give us information regarding our flights. Huh? The flight attendants don’t really tell us too much as we taxi forever though this huge, immense airport. We finally pull up to a gate – where we aren’t allowed off (that’s a relief) and they tell us we’ll take off in an hour and fly back to Singapore. Phew. We were thinking we’d have to find a ferry or something!
Refueled, and back in the air, 7 hours total from Hanoi we arrive in Singapore, no worse for wear really – just tired and wanting to be at the hotel. Our seatmates have plenty of time for their flight, so they’re not worried either. It all works out in the end (and I won’t rant about the rude people trying to rush off the plane because they think their connecting flights are more important than other people’s – or how one girl lied to our faces about the flight she was on, and we see her in baggage collection!).
Ok – so maybe a little rant! But, bags arrive, collected, we go outside to see about the free hotel shuttle. It will arrive in 40 minutes – we really don’t want to wait, and the helpful ground transportation lady tells us it is a quick 15 minute taxi ride that shouldn’t cost more than 20-25 Singapore dollars. Worth it. There’s no queue for the taxi, so we are out of the airport in no time. And to the hotel in the advertised 15 minutes.
Check in is easy, and except that we aren’t quite sure how to use the key card to operate the elevator (tap the card on the security panel, don’t wave it), we get to our room without delay. And what a room! We are so bummed we were so late! it is huge, with a great balcony outside. A large sofa, huge soaking tub, desk and totally comfy bed. The bathroom is awesome as well with walk-in tile shower that opens into the bedroom and the bathroom. Neat.
We dump our stuff and run up to the club, because it closes in 20 minutes! This is dinner. Turns out, it’s really good. There are all sorts of appetizer food up there, wings, fish, spring rolls and a shrimp dish that is all gone – but the sweet club attendant calls down to the restaurant to get us more. Lovely! A totally delicious chocolate brownie/cake thing and beer and wine too. Nice way to just hunker down in the hotel and hang out. We have no desire to go anywhere tonight – just relax.
After the club closes, we organize a bit in the room, then go downstairs to what is billed as the “lounge” in the lobby. It’s not really a lounge per se, but a little convenience store type counter. There are drinks and such, but you have to have a desk clerk come over to get you anything. Ok, well, not what we expected, but we’ll just take our drinks up to the room. Ed gets his beer, but the guy has to go and get my wine somewhere. We tell him we’ll wait – “oh no ma’am,” he says, “I’ll bring it up to your room.” Okie dokie. And 3 minutes later, there he is ringing the doorbell with this huge glass of wine. Best pour I’ve had in years!
So, we spend the rest of the night relaxing, catching up on emails and generally just decompressing from our last 10 days of busy-ness.
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