Vietnam/Cambodia Day 13: To Hanoi

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

While our tour offered an optional pre-trip extension to Hanoi, Hue, and other parts of Vietnam, it didn’t work with our schedule. We decided instead to add our own 3-day extension to Hanoi at the end.

After a little last-minute souvenir shopping in Siem Reap, we spent much of the day at the Raffles Hotel saying good-byes to many of our fellow travelers. Our flight was late in the afternoon, and we were among the last to leave. Two other couples, Jeff and Barbara, and Brit and Jan, were on the same flight to Hanoi. Jeff and Barbara had very similar plans to ours, while Brit and Jan had a much longer itinerary planned.

We had hoped to book a tour guide in Hanoi through the same service that provided the tour’s local guides in Saigon. But they informed me that because many of their guides were taking a vacation during the Tet holiday (coinciding with our visit to Hanoi), they could not provide one. But Jeff and Barbara said they had a guide and would check with her if we could join their tour of Ha Long Bay on Thursday. We later heard that she could accommodate us, which will greatly enhance our visit.

In the afternoon, we set out in one of the small buses with one of our local guides. The new Siem Reap-Angkor International Airport is quite a distance, a little over an hour, out of town. We arrived at the airport’s huge, but mostly deserted, terminal. It was quickly evident that the airport had been financed by the Chinese, from the X-ray machines with side-by-side Cambodian and Chinese flags, the pedestrian barriers bearing the name of the Chinese-owned management company (Yunnan Investment Holdings Limited), and the traditional Chinese clothing worn by the check-in clerks.

We spent most of the time waiting for our flight in the business-class lounge. When using their WiFi, I found that they were trying to substitute their own security certificate for the one my email server uses, indicating that they may be trying to monitor my email. Fortunately, I was able to use the cellular network for email access instead.

We had arranged with our hotel for a transfer from the airport. It was very chaotic in the arrival area when we got out of immigration and customs, so it took a few minutes to find the driver holding a sign with our name. The hour-long ride from the airport gave us our first glimpse of traffic in Hanoi: crazy. As we approached our hotel, we found ourselves on narrower and narrower streets crowded with people, scooters, and cars. Somehow our driver managed to stop and let us out right in front of our hotel.

We stayed in the May de Ville Crown Hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. We were greeted with cups of spiced tea when we arrived, which were very welcome. The hotel was compact but clean and comfortable, although its five-star rating might be a bit of a stretch.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.