The journey

I cannot say it was a short one...but at least without major complications. Lucky me!

We arrived in Moscow on time and I spent the 4 remaining hours at the airport reading Polish magazines and planning my next steps. I also had the most awful sandwich with chicken ever. It was called "club sandwich with chicken" but as you can expect Russian staff probably never see one, a  good one I mean. So I got something which tasted like half-cooked toast bread with chicken and lettuce. What's worse the lettuce was cooked 100% because of microwave treatment. Imagine the taste...
I didn't complain however, giving myself some room for future dealings with all the food-options in Vietnam.

Connection Moscow - Hanoi was looking good at the start, but in the morning I realized there was a delay. Like 45 min dealy. And my plan with visa on arrival with checkin for another domestic Vietnam flight had only 2,5 hrs window in total. So minus the 45 already... it started getting tight.
I shoott off the aerloplane before the BC members and arrived and visa window first. I think this was the key to success, avoiding the queue there and everything went quite smooth onwards.

On the domestic flight however I was the only European face.It was completely new to me. I must admit that I felt weird. Now I understand other guys arriving in Europe...

what I will remember from this?

Moscow airport customer service

Probably the funny Russian approach to customer service, including also the fact that you could order a fancy green tea with jasmin or posh coffee, or a cake with caviar, BUT they served you in plastic cups (!). Maybe normally I wouldn't bother but they serve tea in proper pots...

I confused the gates in Moscow and almost boarded for Tokio. Imagine! :)
I was looking at all the faces trying to find an European mate, but there was none! Then the hostess told me my gate was 23 and I was at 22..


Vietnamese vista on arrival is a very handy process; prepare all the documents beforehand and then it takes literally 5-10 minutes from handing papers to receiving your passport with new colorful visa. It worked perfectly. Once I was done, there was another two aeroplanes of pale faces arriving to get visa..

There was no mess at the airports, both in Hanoi and in Saigon. I don't know why, I was expecting this to b almost the worse part. Okey I must admit, I went for a wrong checkin section at first, but this happens also in Europe (Frankfurt!). To bes honest Paris CDG may be more confusing in terms of directions and language :))) In Vietnam you have proper English transcriptions whenever needed.

Happily around 2 p.m. local time I collected my bag and hopped on a taxi to Saigon District 1.