Seth gave me quite a scare. A hospital in Thailand is not ideal. But, they were good enough and after some tough days, he seems to be on the mend, though his culinary experimentation phase has come to a screeching halt (understandably).
Getting to Vietnam was a two step ordeal. Due to flight times, we would have to fly from Phuket to Bangkok, and the next day fly from Bangkok to Hanoi. We had a bag of unused items and souvenirs that we wanted to stash somewhere in Bangkok. So, once our flight landed, we hopped in a taxi (a metered taxi from the airport) and sped off to a storage facility in the center of Bangkok. After some confusing back and forth with the driver, who knew about as much English as we know Thai, we got him to agree to wait a minute while Seth dropped off the bag, before heading to our hotel, which was right across from the airport. I'm not sure what he thought about the whole ordeal, but he seemed to think it was funny.
What I thought was funny was driving up to our hotel. Our hotel was disguised as a car wash, and I think it was an undercover no tell motel. I wish we took pictures, because it was such a funny place. It was mostly clean, and the bed happened to be one of the most comfortable we've had in a while. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but Thailand seems to be notorious for very hard/firm mattresses. This, mostly clean, bed was much softer.
We asked the woman at the front desk if there was a shopping mall nearby. She asked us if IT Shopping Mall was ok, and we said, "sure!" There have been so many acronyms on our trip and shopping malls tend to be referred to by their acronym. Who knew that this time the acronym would be so literal in English. The mall was full of IT gadgets. It was a mall of adapters, monitors, speakers, phones, and anything else you and your electronics collection may need. And our dinner options were minimal. But, we ended up going to a chinese restaurant that had been recommended to us in the past named MK (note the acronym). It was pretty delicious. We ordered a mix of noodles and dim sum like foods.
We woke up at 4:30am to catch our flight to Hanoi. Unfortunately, when you hail a taxi at odd hours, and not odd hours, there's a high chance that your taxi driver will be drunk. We noticed this very quickly. Even though the ride was only about 10 minutes, we almost got out and walked, because he was bad news. But, we made it to the airport and from there it was pretty straightforward; long lines, airport employees who don't make sense, seats with no legroom, and smelly people sitting next to you.
At the airport in Hanoi we grabbed a super cheap sim card for our phone and found our hotel shuttle. The Landmark Hotel is in the old section of Hanoi. We walked around a bit and found some interesting lunch of sautéed veggies. We're pretty excited to see Sandra tomorrow!