Voyage to Vietnam

We were so fortunate in October 2025 to have a two-week October Half Term which aligned with both my school, and Tiger's Primary School. So, far in advance I started to search for flights around the dates and eventually settled on Vietnam. On paper, the journey looked horrifically long but you certainly could not argue with the price - £857 for both of us return with Shenzhen Airlines!

The comparison was about £1400 direct with Vietnam Airlines but I reasoned that after a 14-hour flight we'd need to have a night in a nice hotel room so why not break the journey in China rather than go straight to Hanoi and collapse there? So on Friday 17th October, having picked Tiger up from school, driven to my parents' house in Uxbridge where I left the car and Uber'd to Heathrow we found ourselves on our way!

Our flight had included luggage and seat selection. I will freely admit that their website leaves much to be desired but it was funtional and didn't require too much figuring things out. We seemed to be able to book a seat ok, but not get an online boarding pass and there was a substantial queue to get through when we arrived at Terminal 2 but overall it was fine. The actual flight was 22:05 and we arrived at the airport for 19:00 and killed a bit of time in the pretty substantial kids play area before heading to our gate.

Our seats were in row 21 and we settled in for the first 12 hours! We slept a few hours and then were very active with our downloaded Netflix movies on my phone, and Tiger's ipad. The highlight though was the kids woodland animals puppet sewing kit (£8 from Amazon!).

Our arrival time into Shenzhen was 17:15 (about 10am UK time). Due to lack of sleep and ipad battery I was slightly struggling at this point and really looking forward to having a swim at the hotel and going to bed. Unfortunately there was a bit of bureaucracy getting the 24-hour visa-free transit. In arrivals we were confronted with machines with QR codes which essentially generated an electronic arrivals card but (of course!) the wifi didn't work properly so I faffed around trying to do that, then queuing up at immigration before being sent to a different area (far left of the immigration desks) to wait on chairs whilst our paperwork was processed. I had a massive sense of humour failure at this point as this took the best part of 2 hours. So the moral of the story is come prepared to wait.

Thankfully, once we were processed and with a sticker in our passports, the airport was quite easy to navigate through. We had to go out (past lots of restaurants still within the airport), in a lift and to Gate 16. We did all of this with our luggage on a trolley which went all the way into our room at the Hyatt Regency (£73 / 705 CNY).

The Hyatt Regency is the most expensive of the three hotels inside the airport, but I had booked it because it had a swimming pool open from 10am to 10pm. Another time, had I not specifically wanted the pool at these times, I'd have been tempted to go for the cheaper Hyatt Place. This is also in the airport and has a slightly smaller pool, but I had discounted as it had less convenient opening times.

We headed straight for the pool - there was a big one and also a sauna bubble pool before it closed at 10pm. So this definitely hit the spot. Important to note that you are supposed to wear swimming caps, but the lifeguard on duty just gave me one to borrow!

One slight point on communication in China. Literally nothing worked - Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Even the hotel wifi didn't seem to give us an awful lot of connection so we were pretty cut off from the rest of the world during our time here. The only thing I did manage to get out was an email to say we were still alive! With hindsight, a WeChat account and a bit of background research would be recommended but we survived and aside from being digitally cut off from the world, our stay was super comfortable.

Also, we were so tired we went straight to bed (with some snacks) but the airport 'proper' i.e. before you actually go to the hotel has lots of restaurants so I'd also highly recommend eating here before you get to the hotel, or going back after you've checked in.

The next morning we had an amazing breakfast - and the restaurant even had a soft play!

After breakfast, we visited the roof top garden of the hotel and watched the planes for a while before finally checking out at 12 noon ahead of our 16:35 flight from Shenzhen to Hanoi.

In the hotel, we were actually already in the airport but we had to exit the hotel (with all our bags on the trolley we'd kept in our room). It was ever so slightly confusing as we had to enter and leave the hotel via the 'GTC Connection Bridge' accessible by lift on Level 3, versus the Hotel Reception being on the ground floor, the pool/fitness centre on third floor and our room being high up!

Back in the airport, we re-wrapped the bag and ate in McDonalds. For a moment, I thought I'd be struggling to pay, but finally one of my credit cards worked!

My body clock was all over the place at this point, but we then headed towards our gate and stopped at the kids soft play where I was able to lie down and rest one a beanbag but also where Tiger had a whole social thing going on with kids from all over the world!

Our flight to Hanoi was two hours leaving at 16:35 and landing at 17:40. We had an airport pick up booked with our hotel for 16 USD and checked into the Astoria Hanoi Hotel and Travel hotel for 2 nights (£77) in a room with a balcony looking out over the old streets below. We were finally in bed in Vietnam for just before 9pm!