Arrival in Vietnam (2019) - Vietnam Travel Blog

We have been dreaming about traveling to Vietnam for many years. One day after a long flight and without having planned our trip a lot we landed in this country.

In this post we’ll tell you about our experience at the airport doing the paper work, buying a SIM card to stay connected and sorting out how to use Grab app to get to the accommodation.

Da Nang was our first contact with Vietnam. We arrived from Barcelona on a Qatar Airways flight with a (not so long) stopover in Doha, Qatar.

Flight & Stopover

It took us almost a day to arrive (including flight and stopover).

If you have the Priority Pass card, your stopover in Qatar can be very pleasant. Luckily, we were able to relax a bit there before continuing our journey. On such a long journey, it’s fantastic.

It’s also worth mentioning that Qatar aircrafts are much more comfortable, due to the space between seats, than other airlines’. At least in our experience.

We were also lucky with the crew who assisted us at every opportunity, as they were particularly friendly and helpful. We think it was not luck, but that they are always this friendly.

Visa

Anyway, we arrived at Da Nang airport around 7 am.

The first thing we had to sort out upon arrival, of course, was entering Vietnam. In our post about survival tips in Vietnam you can find all relevant information.

We presented the documents at a desk. “The office” looked very simple.

The interesting thing that’s worth mentioning is that there are officers who do not speak English at all, so all communication was through signs.

They took our passports, the photos (yes, you need to bring an ID photo with you) and a few minutes later they returned our passports with a valid visa for the time we had requested.

We spent about two hours completing the procedure, but we finally passed the checkpoint, collected our luggage … and we entered Vietnam!

SIM Card

Once in the Arrivals Hall we needed to get a SIM card to stay connected.

Fortunately, it was very easy to get one inside the airport.

There were different options. We opted for the “Mobiphone” service that offered unlimited internet access for a month and it only costed 8 USD.

It worked the whole trip and we had no issues. We couldn’t ask for more.

Exchange Boreau

As we hadn’t brought any local banknotes, and we had to pay our trip to the accommodation, we needed to change some money at the airport.

We usually try to change as little as possible at any airport, as the rate is frecquently not convenient. However, this time, the exchange rate we got at the airport turned out to be quite good. Well, we were happy when we learned later that we got the same rate when exchanging in the city.

Grab (taxi app)

The next challenge ahead was to figure out how to get from the airport to our accommodation.

As our host from Ho Chi Minh had recommended us to use Grab app (which is an app similar to Uber used in Asia) to travel from the airport to our accommodation, we downloaded it and tried to get a car.

But then we discovered that this app was not working from inside Da Nang airport.

It’s locked so Grab cars cannot be hired from there.

Therefore, as soon as we left the arrivals hall, after taking our bags, people already showed up with signs that said “Taxi”, “Uber”, “Grab”. They offered to take us to our accommodation for 20 euros!

We knew it was just a few kilometers from the airport to our accommodation, so it actually seemed too much.

And there we were, super tired from the trip, already overwhelmed by the temperature, which was already higher than 35 ℃ at 8 am, plus the hounding of these people who didn’t even let us think…

They were very irritating, trying to convince us to make the trip with them.

Besides, considering all prices we had as a reference from Vietnam, we didn’t understand how an Uber trip (actually its Asian version) could be sooo expensive.

Then, we started looking at the map on our phone and realized that the airport was in the middle of the city.

Therefore, we decided to walk out of the airport, about 300 or 500 meters, and try our luck from there to request our transfer with this app, Grab. We thought it should work well outside.

And it worked! Once at the airport gate we’ve been able to call our Grab.