I’m sorry. I had to use that heading for one post, and I promise I won’t use it again!!
So we’re finally on our honeymoon. Our incredibly generous family and friends gave us contributions towards our honeymoon when we got married six weeks ago, so we’re off to explore the amazing cuisine of Vietnam on the Intrepid Real Food Adventure tour.
We flew in this morning (on the red eye) with Singapore, letting me try out two new (to me) lounges – the Perth Silverkris lounge and the Singapore Gold lounge (which un-instinctively, is the lesser lounge, where the SilverKris lounge is the better one). The Perth lounge was nice, with a plate of specially marked GF treats (including some relish Italian almond bikkies) and some bubbles to help with the wait. The Gold lounge in Singapore may have had bubbles, but I didn’t try any (it’s ok! I’ll do it on the way home!) as it was the early hours of the morning and all I wanted was caffeine. They are a bit strange as they don’t have a bathroom in the lounge itself, instead using the one along the corridor nearby, but it’s still a quiet, comfortable place to wait for your flight.
While I did feel a bit weird crossing the Gulf of Thailand/South China Sea area where the mysterious MH370 lost contact, but a Singapore Sling helped to calm my nerves (which, to be honest, were probably more a product of sleep deprivation and caffeine!)
We landed in Hanoi early, and were through passport control and security before the flight was even supposed to have landed! This meant a short wait for our pickup, but not too long. We’d booked a night at the Hanoi Opera Hilton to kick off the honeymoon in style, so we availed ourselves of their transfer service.
The Hanoi Hilton Opera, across the park.
This hotel is pretty OTT! It’s in the Opera area of Hanoi, which is where you’ll also find the spekky designer labels, the ones I don’t even bother looking through the windows of! The lobby has four floors’ worth of marble, and the outside is pretty imposing… They had left a basket of fruit in the room to welcome us (Note to others: always useful to tell hotels it’s your honeymoon! But I wouldn’t try it more than once 😉 )
Flowers and fruit – how lovely! Dragonfruit, mango, ladyfinger bananas, rambutan, apples, citrus…
Since it was pouring with rain when we arrived, as well as being hot and incredibly humid, we thought it was safe to have a bit of downtime before hitting the town. After a quick shower and nap to refresh, we headed out for a bit of an exploratory wander around the area. Miraculously, the rain had stopped and everyone else was out, too!
One of the parks near the lake.
After being completely directionally challenged because of the cloud cover, we eventually found our way to the main lake, where it seemed half of Hanoi was spending their Saturday afternoon. There were children’s dance classes, many, many games of badminton using courts painted on the pavement (with or without racquets – “handball badminton” looked like fun!) and lots of people wandering the green spaces near the lake.
One of the many games of badminton.
We headed north, and hit one of the shopping areas, full of tuktuk drivers, thousands of scooters, and various different kinds of shops. No photos unfortunately – it was a bit too busy to safely take the camera out!
The happy couple (looking at the other selfie camera!)
Temple on the lake.
Since it was getting late and we hadn’t had an actual lunch apart from grazing on the fruit basket, at around 6 we headed back to the hotel to try the canapés and drinks in the lounge. No bubbles here (!!) but there was a nice Chilean Sav Blanc and some tasty local and international treats, like dim sum, chicken stir fry, shot glasses of a cottage pie-type arrangement, and the obligatory cheeses etc. R tried the local beer, Halida, which he didn’t mind, but not being a big fan of that style of beer, he mainly stuck to the tasty treats instead. Yum!
Yummy canapes
We’ll be moving hotels to join up with the tour tomorrow, but it’s been nice to extend our experience of Hilton!
Two Weeks Away 
love the Hilton!!!!