Day 3, May 27 th: Frankfurt- Hanoi

The main difference between the the places seen on the trip must have so far been the weather. Leaving from Finland in beautiful and on Finnish scale nice summer weather, via Germany and rain to the Vietnamese hot and damp "weather". I'm not sure you can call this weather anymore. :D

Ok, but before moving to Vietnam I must bring up the Vietnamese airlines' company. Enni was really thrilled by the beep green color (yes, I know women have probably a real name for this color too) and the personel was dressed up in somewhat eastern style. The entertainment center seemed awesome before you got to use it. It had this all in one remote (see the picture below) that had a TV remote-game controller-sky phone-credit card reader- combination. Boy was I excited not ot mention Enni getting to push all these buttons. The reality was a bit more sad than what it first seemed like. The reaction of the center to the remote was worse than on ols Symbian phones after a few updates (sorry all ya Nokian's but U must know what I'm talking about), the movies shown in this infortainment system were not based on this "watch whenever you like" method but started a movie on oen time and you may join watching it whenever you wished for (!). Maybe the worst thing still was the gaming section. The games list featured some mostly classics like Chess, Caveman and Tetris. The ones I used to grow with for crying out loud! Ok, they were coded in 2000 but still I kinda got the nostalgic vibes from them. :)

 Sky call device...

 Gaming-/remote controller...

Credit card reader. All-in-One!

Otherwise the flight was ok, and we actually enjoyed our stay. Traveling with an 4 yo girl is actually not as stressing as you might think! ;) Well, of course the sleeping due to the time difference was a bit challenging for the little princess but as we all, they sleep as they feel sleepy after all. :) After the refreshing 4 hour night sleep we woke up in the Vietnamese airspace and managed to change into something more nicer just before the breakfast.

Landing went well and the border formalities were quite well managed. One thing caught my process developer's eye/ear/heart at the passport control and it was the fact that were queuing to one booth from where we got moved to another queue and after that I noticed that the people that came to the first queue 10 minutes after us got past the control before we did. Talking about the need to shuffle the deck of cards by the border officers! :D Well, we are on the vacation and I thought to myself that I won't let these little things matter too much for the following month or so. ;)

The baggage claim was as in east usually: all the people were packed right next to the conveyor, which usually drives me crazy, but as mentioned before I kept my cool (although the temperature inside the airport was not) and took a step back just to have a small possibility in training people that it doesn't help a jack to wait next to the belt. I got what I wanted and our bags were among the first ones so I got to push from the back row to the conveyor and back. Also taught Enni these very important lessons. :)

We at the conveyor

After the airport we took some money from the ATM, and I got to be a millionaire for the first time in my life! :) Sadly the maximum withdrawal limit was set to 2 million local dollars. ;) I'm not sure whether 2 will pass for multi or not.

The taxi ride to the apartment complex (Pacific place) was about a half an hour, in which Enni was almost sleeping already despite all the things to see.

A lady with a rooster and duck on a scooter

The apartment building is a 19 floor high building with a roof top restaurant, gym and a pool. Guess which was the one Enni was heading right after our arrival? Well, as I already decide before the trip that we'll be doing what Enni wants (at least as often as possible) we went to the pool. I also decided to try to teach Enni to swim, cause hey, wat else would be better, right? ;) We went to eat some local noodle soup during the day in the Quan ngon and also visited the Highland coffee (nothing to do with the Whisky brand BTW) to eat the "forgotten" Lydia's day cake. In the evening we went to a Thai restaurant that must have a side office in Hämeenlinna (see the picture below).

 The view to north-ish from the pool

 City view from the pool

 Enni going to see the pool... for the third time that day. ;)

Sawasdee, almost like Sawaddee

I got to try the gym in the evening as well. A typical hotel gym with (sadly) no kettlebells. :( Oh, and I got to drink my first sip of Bia Ha Noi... most probably not the last ones. Over and out till the next time!