Or so I thought :(, complete story a bit later.
Final packing action took place in the morning. I don't know how, but I managed to fit everything in :) My big bag must weigh about 30kg though :) Checked out of the hotel, ordered airport taxi for 3:30 and headed to the Army Museum. I wanted to see the army museum as I heard from other travelers that it portrays the war and occupation quite well. Just in case I read the history section in the travel guide beforehand - I'm glad I did that as the museum was not that comprehensive at all. It gave some insight to the situation but many principal reasons for certain events were not explained at all, simply the event was shown, but why it happened and who initiated was not explained. So I was very glad I had done my homework.
Since the discussion with other travelers and some questions bought up in the bus ride to Halong Bay I started to ponder about the timeline of the events and reasons behind the political and war actions taken. I wanted to get a clear overview of the events and reasons behind the events - so hence the museum visit. As I did not get what I wanted from there I did some research on the net as well - I'll have a separate entry for the history lesson a bit later as it is still in progress :)
After the museum I walked around in the area a bit, stumbled upon some well guarded memorial by Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum building, walked by the mausoleum as well, but as the body is in maintenance at the moment then did not bother going in. Found the stadium of Hanoi - it was all closed and deserted for all I could detect. Stumbled upon Literature pagoda - this one I chose to explore as well. Then my time was up - walked back, had quick lunch and shower at the hotel (this hotel I stayed at was super nice, they would help with anything one needs). Then headed over to the airport - getting all sad that my vacation is over.
At the airport first I got my big back bag wrapped in plastic and then headed over to the check in area. It was strangely empty, on a closer look I notice an information sheet saying that the flight has been canceled due to severe weather, typhoon Hagupit has taken over Hong Kong and all the passengers are automatically rescheduled for the next morning's flight at 11:05 - argh, this means I'll miss my flight to Helsinki! Other passengers were mostly rerouted, but as I was holding two separate tickets (Hanoi -> Hong Kong and then Hong Kong -> Helsinki -> Tallinn) then they were not able to reroute me. All they could do is to rebook me for the same flights with a one day delay. Which means that I'd be leaving Hanoi at 19:10 on the 24th and flight from Hong Kong would be on the 25th - so I'd get home a day later. Oh I was devastated - I had planned one day for just relaxing before heading to work, so that will not be happening.
Just in case I contacted my travel agent as well to see if she is able to change the tickets or something so that I'd still get back at the initially planned date. After about 2 hours of discussions and checks and double checks it became clear that my best option is to leave the next day - but I might be able to get on an earlier flight on standby (the one they originally suggested, at 11:05). As I was double checking my ticket I noticed that they had not re booked my flight out of Hong Kong - grrr, meaning that Finnair would simply think that I never showed up. It was whole new hassle to find the lady, explain it all to her that there was mistake and ask them to take care of it. About 45 minutes later I had a new printout where the flight to Helsinki was changed as well, glad that I noticed!
So then I went to a cafe and tried to figure out what should I do next. I also checked the weather information, turns out that the storm is heading towards northern Vietnam :( So basically I need to get out of here as soon as possible, otherwise I'll be stuck still. I figured that I should try to get on a first flight the next day and get to Hong Kong somehow, there I would be able to communicate with Finnair at least, in case some flight is overbooked now or something - I'd be right on the spot for information and I would not need to get it done through some third person who can barely make herself understandable in English :(
So I decided to stay at the airport in order to start checking the flights early on. That was one horrible night :( First of all they closed all the floors except the first floor, so I ended up sleeping on cafeteria chairs. Second of all there was no air conditioning in the building so it was extremely hot. Then there were cockroaches and rats running around all over the place, cockroaches were on the table I sat at and climbing on the chairs and everywhere - oh it was freaky. At some point all the lights got turned off as well. OOOh it was just bad, bad bad bad I say.
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