Finnair has changed their flights to Bangkok to earlier, because I can't recall ever having served breakfast in the dark. Well, anyway, we arrived in Thailand and went to the information desk to consult whether there's a departure tax, should we leave the airport during the layover time (we had five hours). I had noticed comments hinting that here and there. The very helpful girl first informed us that we don't have enough time to go to the city (good thing, we asked that in the first place), because we have to be back for our international departure at least 3 hours prior. Finally another employee joined our conversation and we learned that we would need to pay 20 EUR each should we go out meanwhile. So, we just went through the transit area to the departure area. All the four hours we spent there on the couch and drinking coffe, there were also 7-8 of the airport employees sitting and chatting on couches too.
When going to the gate, just before it, there was additional document check. Like they asked, I gave them my passport, boarding pass and Vietnam Visa Approval Letter. They started to look through all that and ask additional question, like where is the immigration stamp. Which obviously wasn't there, since we never got out of the transit zone. Every 30 or so seconds they told me "Miss, please wait for a second!" I must have looked like I'm gonna run away any second. By that time we had a line of 30-40 people behind us.
Unexpedadly we learned that we are going to be fed on the plane. Or so we thought, once they started to push around the carts. 3 food carts were walked past our row at least 3-4 times each and everyone of them seemed to be on mission - moving from back to front handing out food to the kids, then moving from front to back handing out hindi food, after that maybe halal food. Until there was finally time to feed also the regular customers and I got my fish. Served with chicken-pomelo salad and for dessert green tapioca pudding with coconut cream. But as mentioned in the title, don't look the unexpected horse into the mouth (there's an Estonian proverb that you shouldn't look the given horse into the mouth - meaning that you should not complain about gifts).
Using the plane toilet reached next level here - one Vietnamese guy went there barefoot. Maybe it was reasonable - I don't really want to get my shoes dirty either.
So, we arrived to Vietnam. Or almost. Because we needed a visa first. To keep the tourists as far away as possible from their country, they hadn't put any sign, where to apply for the Visa and where to pay for it. There was a counter with sign "Visa Approval Letter", but that one didn't seem quite right, as we already did have that letter. Then there was "Visa Fee and Passport Return" counter, which didn't seem right either, since we still had our own passports. Nothing to return at that moment. Turned out that we had still to go to the letter counter, where they took our passports and the letters. And gave us papers to fill out. We filled those out and in no time after waiting for 20 minutes and paying the 25 EUR minus 1 USD (fee was 25 USD, but we had no dollars) we got our visas. After that there was the passport contract, where according to the ideas of communism - everyone is equal - were no separate lines for locals and tourists and we all had to wait in the same long lines.
Passports checked, we took Grab, drove to the hotel and accommodated in our room. The service is so great that they even read our wishes from the eyes. Walked around some in our neighbourhood, searched money exchange, ate fresh summer rolls with some fresh juice and fell into beds. Üks
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