Hungry for Points: Vietnam

Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Back to the Motherland: Sofitel Metropole Hanoi and Park Hyatt Saigon

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After returning from Sapa, we had one day left in Hanoi and then headed back to Saigon for one day before leaving Vietnam. We had an ah-ha moment in Hanoi as we realized that we were idiots for heading back to Saigon before then going to Hong Kong, since Hanoi was actually much closer. No wonder I never got good grades in geography class.

We had stayed at the Hilton for the first night in Hanoi before leaving on our Ha Long Bay and Sapa excursions, but on the way back I really wanted to try the Sofitel Metropole hotel as it was rated as one of the top hotels in the world. Overall, we thought that the hotel and in particular the service was really top-notch. The hotel and the rooms have a lot of old-world charm and there is really a special feeling while staying here. In addition, we both visited the spa for massages and really enjoyed the facilities there. The spa treatments are expensive by SE Asian standards, but we still found them to be very very good value in terms of what we're used to paying back at home. I highly recommend trying this hotel for anyone that's visiting Hanoi.

welcome gift

After a short 1-night stay in Hanoi, we headed back to Saigon, arriving in the afternoon really just to layover until our flight the next morning. I had a Hyatt free night certificate laying around and decided to redeem it for the Park Hyatt Saigon, which is another highly rated hotel. It's actually just down the block from the Sheraton that we had stayed at for the first two nights of our trip. Given the quick visit we didn't really get a chance to explore the hotel in much detail, but thought that it was great overall. In Park Hyatt-fashion it's certainly much more chic than the Sofitel Metropole and perhaps didn't have as much character, but we certainly enjoyed our stay there, and it was in a great central location from which we were able to grab a last meal in Vietnam.

park hyatt welcome gift

fanny ice cream one last time

Back to the Motherland: Hiking Through Sapa

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After another 4-5 hour drive back to Hanoi I was pretty tired, but we had booked a back-to-back excursion and headed straight to the train station to board an overnight train to Sapa which is in the mountains. Based on reviews from Tripadvisor, we selected the Sapa Ly cabin and were pleased with the accommodations. We had paid a little extra to book an entire 4-person cabin to ourselves and thought that it was money well spent rather than spending the night in bunk beds with two strangers. The train station in Hanoi was a complete zoo, and I would recommend getting there at the last possible moment to avoid the crowds. Also, be advised about scams where someone will just grab your luggage from you and "help" bring it to your cabin. Once there, they will demand an ungodly amount of money for the 2 minutes of work.

I actually slept better than I expected on the train, and we arrived bright and early in the morning in Sapa. From the train station to the main town is about an hour long drive through some pretty windy roads, and was a nauseating way to start the day. But after we arrived and settled in, Sapa quickly became my favorite place on the entire trip.

Because we were in the mountainous region, there are a lot of cool hikes, and we did two different hikes over the next couple days. Each day we had a different guide from one of the local Hmong tribes. It was really refreshing to get out and walk around, and Sapa had some of the most picturesque views I've ever seen. Overall, I would highly recommend this trip to anyone that visits Hanoi. It's actually very efficient to visit, since you end up spending a night on the overnight train each way there instead of staying in a hotel.

Back To The Motherland: Overnight Trip to Ha Long Bay

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After a one night stopover in Hanoi, we were picked up early in the morning by our tour group and began the drive to Ha Long Bay. The drive takes the better part of the morning and took around 4-5 hours with a couple breaks factored in. We had arranged a 1-night overnight cruise on the Dragon Pearl boat based on reviews from Tripadvisor. Overall we thought that the excursion was very well organized and enjoyed everything. As an added surprise, the food was also very good on board the boat.

The 2-day cruise has a couple stops, including visiting a fishing village, exploring some caves, and kayaking around the bay. If you're going to visit Hanoi, I think that Ha Long Bay is a must see and the overnight boat cruise is a great way to do it.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Back To The Motherland: Sheraton Saigon and Hilton Hanoi Opera

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As Rick James once said, "hotel credit card sign-up bonuses, hell of a drug." Ok, terrible joke, but you get the idea. I was on a mission to accumulate hotel points, and stockpile them I did. In a very short period of time, I was able to get the following all via credit card offers:

SPG Amex: 25,000 point sign-up bonus
Hilton Amex: 60,000 point sign-up bonus
Amex Premier Rewards Gold: 75,000 sign-up bonus + 35,000 system-glitch "gift"
Hyatt Chase Card: 2 free nights systemwide

Coming from 0 hotel points, I felt like I was sitting on a small fortune, and was excited to put them to use. The first uses of the points would be on 2 nights at the Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers, and then 1 night at the Hilton Hanoi Opera.

After landing in Saigon, I was an absolute wreck. I believe that the flight from ORD-HKG was around 14 hours, followed by a 3+ hour layover, then a 2 hour flight to SGN. I hadn't slept a wink on the longhaul ORD-HKG flight, and had a really hard time with jet lag on this trip. The Sheraton Saigon is located in District 1 which is very nice and central part of the city. I've actually found there to be a lot of good deals, especially in Asia, for western hotel chains such as SPG and Hilton. I believe that the cost was only approx. 2,800 SPG points and $40 per night which I thought was good value. Overall we enjoyed our stay at this hotel and in particular thought the breakfast buffet was fantastic and offered a lot of options.

After 2 days in Saigon, much of which I spent in a daze, we headed to Hanoi. We'd be spending 1 night there before leaving for Ha Long Bay. I used 30,000 Hilton points to book the Hilton Hanoi Opera, and despite having not stayed in a Hilton in the past decade, had managed to get Gold status through a loophole. At the time I thought I was a king with my Gold status, and the hotel actually did a good job recognizing it through room upgrade to a suite, access to executive lounge, and free buffet breakfast. Now that I've traveled more and more with hotel status, I've found that non-US hotels definitely do a better job recognizing status, especially those in Asia.

The hotel is definitely a bit older, and while it was perfectly acceptable for a 1 night stay, we certainly weren't dazzled, but I felt it was good value for the 30,000 points I spent on it. However, I was glad that I had booked the Sofitel Metropole Hotel for our 1 night stay later on, as we found that hotel to be much better.

suite living room

suite bedroom

welcome gift

fog/mist all over the city

traditional hanoi fish soup

Back To The Motherland: Introduction

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Lisa had just started her 2nd year of business school, and one night while we were talking, she casually asked if we should take a trip for spring break. I thought to myself, what the heck is spring break? Then I remembered, it's the week-long break I used to get each year in college, along with the three month summer break, and month and a half winter break. I started to wax nostalgic about the good ol' days, and next thing I knew we had a spring break trip planned.

At this point, we were obviously way too old for a Daytona Beach/Mexico trip, so we instead decided to visit each other's "motherlands". I had always wanted to visit Vietnam, and Lisa had wanted to see Hong Kong. I had just made 1K for the first time the year before, and was excited to have the opportunity to burn 4 of my systemwide upgrades to upgrade us from economy to business class. The popular SFO-HKG route didn't have any confirmable upgrade space available, so instead I agreed to backtrack to Chicago to meet her, after which we'd fly ORD-HKG-SGN, and then back HKG-ORD-SFO. The reason for the open jaw was that adding a stopover in Hong Kong significantly increased the price of the ticket, so instead I figured I'd use miles to get us from SGN-HKG, which I did and was able to book my first ever international first class experience on Thai Airways routing SGN-BKK-HKG.

I had been in the points/miles game for about a year at this point, and had focused my energy on accumulating airline miles and status. However, as I began searching for hotels to stay in during the trip, especially in Hong Kong the costs were routinely $200+ and even as high as $400-$500. We still had about 6 months until the trip, so it gave me the opportunity to get into the hotel points game as well, and was quite pleased that on a 12 night trip, we only paid for 4 nights of lodging of which 2 were on a train (no Amtrak loyalty program in Vietnam), 1 was on a boat (hard to find a loyalty program for that), and 1 at a non-mainstream chain that I absolutely wanted to stay in. Gotta love those credit card sign-up bonuses!

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