From Istanbul to Hanoi

So leaving Cappadocia I had a hard few days of travelling ahead of me before reaching Hanoi. I'm still not sure exactly how many days I spent without sleeping a bed but when I did finally arrive in Hanoi, I spent about 24 hours in bed catching up.

First there was the overnight bus from Cappadicia to Istanbul - left 9pm and arrived about 7am.

Then was the day in Istanbul. I decided to head to the airport - otherwise I would have had to put my kit into storage for the day and it was too much of a faff. Istanbul is big!

Flew from Istanbul to Ashgabat arriving there about 4am. But I think it was about 7am their time. Met another Lebense guy called Joe who was flying on to Kuala Lumpur. Had an 11 hour layover at the airport there. However, it was the nicest cleanest airport I have ever stayed at with seats that were designed to be slept in. I think Turkmenistan being something of a hermit kingdom only has a limited number of destinations. I counted about 6 - Ho Chi Minh, Kuala Lumpur, St Petersburg, Istanbul and maybe a couple of others. So the airport was pretty much deserted. I walked to the far end and there was literally no one there. I would have taken a few photos, but would have possibly being inviting arrest. The official staff were all in green military uniforms with enormous hats. They all looked very young. But if you ever need to lay over somewhere I recommend Ashgabat Airport. Also no internet. Which is probably a good thing.

After that another 7/8 hour flight into Ho Chi Minh City. Arrived at about 5/6 am. Could I force myself to complete the journey to Hanoi today or should I stay here for a day? I decided to push on and booked a flight for about 9 am and in the meantime consumed a large amount of coffee - by lucky chance I found a very good coffee shop at the airport.

So finally flew from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi arriving about 11am. Got a Grab taxi to the hotel I'd book and then had a long, long sleep.Read more