Holiday in Hanoi, Part I

by pennypostcard • February 6, 2026 • 0 Comments

After a short work trip to Singapore in mid-January, I returned to Burma for one night to repack and reorient before V and I left on our first R&R trip. Rangoon is a hardship posting; one year of service earns two airfare-paid R&Rs. Unlike a decade ago when I served in Tashkent, we can now use 10 days of administrative leave in lieu of annual leave to take R&R. (This is especially good for entry-level officers new to government service who haven’t yet accumulated much annual leave.)

Since we were approaching the halfway point of our Rangoon tour already and hadn’t used either R&R yet, while hospitalized in Bangkok in December I’d been busily sketching out a short vacation in Vietnam and Indonesia — two countries where neither of us had ever been before. Our first stop: Hanoi.

Because we cost-constructed our R&R plane tickets against the approved destination of Sydney, and only planned a routing with two stops in Vietnam and one in Indonesia, we had enough money left over below the cap to upgrade each of our tickets to business class.

This ended up being very important because I was still using a combination of my wheelchair in airports and my walker for everything else. Flying business class allowed additional space, comfort, and courtesy, including extra baggage allowance, easier wheelchair assistance, and access to the amenities of the business class lounge.

I was not aware of this previously, but when you require the use of a wheelchair in an airport (and wish to gate-check your wheelchair so it will be available to you planeside upon landing), your spouse or travel companion is not permitted to push you between baggage check and the gate. An airport or airline attendant usually must do so.

At first this policy and its attendant bureaucracy and delays annoyed me. However, I soon realized employees are better equipped than family members to help wheelchair passengers through the nuances of security, unknown corridors, and frequently inaccessible airport logistics. How often have you paid attention to where the disability lane is at screening, or where the hidden elevators are in the parts of the airport where almost no one goes?

It’s a short flight from Rangoon to Hanoi, and particularly pleasant in business class

We survived navigating the airport in Rangoon (although I got a little testy at check-in when an airline representative tried to get my husband to sign a release of reliability waiver on my behalf acknowledging my “health documents were not in order” without even asking me if I had a medical fit-to-fly certificate, which I promptly whipped out), and our first leg to Hanoi. The business class cabin was hardly occupied and we raised a toast before take-off.

We were picked up at the Hanoi airport arrivals area by a hotel driver. As we sped our way towards the bright lights of Vietnam’s capital, we felt happy and lucky to be there. The streets surrounding our accommodation were so crowded the van couldn’t approach, and we had to walk the last two blocks — accompanied by hotel representatives who met us on the sidewalk and hauled our suitcases and my wheelchair.

The next morning I was excited to drink my coffee on our room’s private balcony overlooking the cacophony of the French Quarter, below. Our long-awaited, two-week vacation had finally begun!

We stayed at a hotel called Emerald Waters Classy in the French Quarter, which we would definitely recommend! The room was small but clean and comfortable, the restaurant was nice, and the service and hospitality were truly excellent.

Despite my incessant hand sanitizing in Singapore the week before, I did unfortunately pick up a cold from one of my colleagues at the CLDC. I developed an aggressive sore throat while in Hanoi, with nasal congestion that seemed to increase by the hour.

Although I had to go everywhere with my walker, and our sightseeing was slowed down accordingly, it was totally worth it and I’m glad we didn’t cancel the trip. We did opt to skip the day trip to Ha Long Bay I’d penciled in for our last day in town in favor of looking around Hanoi more, and I have no regrets. It would have been wonderful to see the beauty of Ha Long Bay, but six hours round-trip on a bus with a day cruise in-between sounded like way too much motion and jostling for me, on top of nursing a cold.

Here are some of our favorite things that we did in Hanoi, in no particular order.