Booking with different airlines in and out of the same airport can sometimes introduce a few hurdles. For example, our outbound flight departed from Heathrow Terminal 4, but we will return to Terminal 3, which is on the opposite side of the airport so where best to park the car? We decided that our solution would be to simplify the return journey so did the fiddly bit on the way out. We parked at the newly renamed Terminals 2 & 3 Park & Ride (formerly T2 & T3 Long Stay). From there we caught the shuttle bus over to T2 and then walked to the Terminals 2 & 3 tube station where we took the free Elizabeth line train straight to Terminal 4. We then checked into the Holiday Inn Express for the night, which, along with a couple of other hotels, connects directly to T4 via pedestrian walkways, making it simple for us to reach the check-in desks the next morning. We had a nice clean, comfortable but basic room with breakfast included which ticked all the boxes. Considering it has a captive audience, the bar and restaurant prices were not unreasonable either.
The following morning we were airside by 8:00 where we then boarded the first of two flights with Vietnam Airlines. The initial one from Heathrow to Hanoi departed 10 minutes after the allotted time of 11:00am. As with all long haul flights these days, we like to fly at least Premium Economy and Vietnam Airlines was selected because of the great price we got and although they are lacking in some of the other premium economy perks, their seats have been the most comfortable we have tried by a country mile in this class.
The first leg of the journey took just over 11 hours which gave us a few hours at the end to try and grab a nap with the aim of adjusting to the new time zone of Hanoi which was 7 hours ahead of the UK. Best laid plans and all that, despite the comfortable seats, I probably managed about 90 minutes at the most.
We arrived at Hanoi at the local time of 5:15am and had a connection time of 3 ½ hours before we boarded our second flight to Haneda in Tokyo. Nothing was open when we arrived and along with the airport air-conditioning doing its best to do nothing routine with a 23°C temperature outside, it was really sticky. The flight from Hanoi to Haneda was thankfully a lot shorter than the first. The ticket listed it as 4 hours and 20 minutes which was more or less what it took and we landed safely at Haneda around 3:15 pm local time. The terminal and immigration was a bit of a task with two different systems in operation, one being a QR code that could be done before hand and the other a good old fashioned paper method. Snake queues galore with an awful lot of bewildered passengers who all wanted to occupy the same space but we eventually got there.
Once free of the terminals grasp, we booked an Uber to get us to the hotel and were there in 35 minutes.
Our hotel for the next 4 nights is called the Yokohama Bay Hotel and our room looks out over the bay.
In order to help get our body clock to fall into sync, we took a walk around the area before fatigue got the best of us.
Happy to have finally got here but feeling totally knackered from the travelling. We now have 3 full days to relax a bit and explore some.
