Leaving Hanoi is a not unpleasant experience although regrets aplenty upon walking out of the door of the hostel - the Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel on Ngo Huyen Street has been, past tense there, very good to me, although it did rob me of my sightseeing ability by slowly getting me closer to losing the regular form of actual sight through insistent, consistent, constant and exceptionally merry alcohol abuse.
The pleasant apect of it all began as soon as I acheived my taxi directlt from the hostel doorway - a car ride, my first that I recall in Vietnam at all, and my first in about 2 months in total, and one that was effiecient enough to land me at the airport, for there is only one in Hanoi, a full hour before I had planned.
Now there are some simple rules I have established about this flying lark, based on what you know about me from this `column` (I will call it that from now on in the hope it leads to proper employment and the habit not only sticks but becomes valid 
) you might be able to guess a few things.
Rule 1: Decide whether or not, during this flight, you will be drinking (alcohol, naturally. Whether fluids pass your lips during the next brief portion of your life is a matter that should not be decided without real-time sensory feedback).
Your decision should be based on the follwoing factors; length of flight, class of seat, time of night, level of resident fury at present environmetnal conditions.
All the above of course point steadily towards a `yes` decision most of the time.
Other factors, the ones that point towards the `no` I haven't really figured out yet. A very short flight or severe level of pre-existing alocoholic poisoning (i.e. hangover) or maybe a zen-like happiness with the world and everything in it might of course qualify, but I've never had a hangover too bad or a flight too short that made me actually choose not to decline the beer-maidens (they call them stewardesses in some places), although it has happened once or twice, usually because I fell asleep.
If the answer is `no` (less than a common choice of mine, you probably guessed that already) then you must stoically avoid all eye contact with the beverage and food trolleys that pass your aisle during the flight, and have a damn good book to read - and woe betide the lexicographically ill-equipped if you're also an ambitiously hepatic self-harmer like myself because literature is the one thing that saves the claustrophobic alcoholic from making nasty use of the little folding tables and and arm rests in these planes, and from parading the aircraft viciously papercutting everyone on board with the safety and disaster leaflets because if there is one thing for certain it's that it is a mite tricky getting any sort of decent weapon onto an aeroplane these days...
Rule 2: check rule one again real craefully, see if you can't find a bar in the airport before you leave to loosen you up.
Rule 3: Be unquestioningly polite and honest at all times with everyone onboard. You are trapped together in a steel tube for the following several hours and you need all the friends you can get, particularly if anything weird happens and the cabin becomes fought-for territory in a bizarre ritualistic impromptu tribal war between economy passengers and business class. Unlikely I know, but we've seen how those fuckers travel, the gits. We might stage the Glorious Rebellion Of The Right To Champagne Gratis one day. Look out for it in the news. If it happens, remember you heard it here first.
Rule 4: never put your passport, boarding pass, luggage weight accreditation certificate (where appropriate i.e on the cheap-ass airlines I like to fly with) and immigration/emmigration card either anywhere not easily accessible nor anywhere too easily accessible by pickpockets. Basically wear a proper shirt and use the breast pockets for everything - you're gonna have to display your passport to every officious bastard with a pip on his sleeve or smiley girl in a suspiciously nice figure-hugging dress uniform within the terminal complex, so keep it handy but keep it safe, too.
Whenever I fly I always wear one of my 5.11 tactical shirts, because they are impossible to pickpocket yet have easy access to anything up to and including a paperback book. They must be the single most practical item of clothing mankind hath yet produced - have a look for yerrselves *TAC SHiRT LINK, POLIMIL ETC.**
Rule 5: Check out the duty free and give yourself enopugh time to do so, but not so much you'll get bored and buy 16,000 cigarettes and a kilo of tacky junk `souvenir` household statuary made from beer cans, random wire and other things of no value whatsoever, even to the most tackily-minded relative you might imagine you have back home. This is by far the most artful of the rules; mostly you just strike lucky with the timing, or buy 16,000 cigarettes that you can't even get into the next country. Meh.
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The terminal was a pleasant enough place, I figured out how to check my luggage in get my boarding pass and suchlike after making the abvious decision and only 4 beers - and finishing the reading of Ender's Game, too - I cannot say how much you should all read this book by the way, you can probably guess some of the major points while you're in the middle of it, but man, it is FANTASTIC regardless - but the ease and air of relaxation about the whole deal was refreshing, althoguh the beers might have tinted my favours slightly of course.
I write this now from the plane - if we end up in a horrible crash and this computer somehow survives then I love you all, except any of you who still owe me money - and the staff here have been fantastic, if a little over-zealous with the food.
I bought a chicken salad croissant. Yeah I know, worth the whole article just to mention this - but what was odd was the level of security a croissant apparently needs to survive the arduous experience of being stacked up with hundreds of its brethren, carted about in tightly packed boxes inside vehicles for a bit then dispensed to airplane passengers. It was the sellotape that got me, you see. These things apparently demand a full 360 degree wraparound of sticky taping that makes it - bear in mind you are automatically bereft of anything sharper than a beachball by stepping through Departures - pretty godawfully difficult to get at the food you just bought.
Buying it itself (I resorted to random violence and a regrettable elbowing of my seatmate to get at the croissant in the end) was interesting too, but actually strangely heartwarming. The staff cannot accept Vietnamese Dong for payment, only US Dollars (no surprise there, but as the de rigeur currency in Cambodia is the Dollar not the meek and humble Cambodian Riel I had long since exhausted my supplies of the mighty greenbacks) and Singaporean dollars are good.
And I was halfway through my first beer and the croissant had finally succumbed to the old `teeth 'n' elbow chop` technique by the time I had to pay.
Shit.
We had reached, what Fred Colon would call, an Imp Arse.
Waitasec - credit cards! Of course the almighty Visa is accepted at all the best restaurants, bookshops, shooting ranges and brothels, not to mention a humble airline, so that was it, natutally, chuck 'em some plastic and no more worries.
"It is the airline policy not to accept debit cards, I'm really sorry..." yeah but it's a Visa, try it. Seriously. You know what `Visa card` means? Means it's my problem to deal with the debt later and your job to just bump up the numbers. Visa. Universal get-out-of-bills-free card.
Honestly man there's easily ฃ5000 in there, trust me, a croissant and some beers it can hope with, even at airline prices (although I was glad especially then not to be in the business class section).
However it wasn't just policy, it was my communicating bank which even at 30,000 feet and 9,000 miles from my home branch still holds me in enough contempt to make my life awkward, and it wasn't having any of it.
The steward, a saint if ever I knew one, ended up taking it upon himself to accept my last personal resource - a ฃ20 note - and exchange it himself when we touched down and give me Singaporean Dollars as change in return, Norris bless him and keep him.
I even know the exchange rates and he did not try and gyp me a penny. What a star.
Anyway a nice bumpy landing, immigration (nothing to declare for me3 officers, just keeping a straight face about the box of Cuban cigars in my laptop bag) a taxi ride later and I was at the hostel - and the taxis, while hopelessly expensive being Singapore and being just gone 2am - are all metered and it seems they have The Knowledge of the island to the tiniest degree.
But I was there - am here - and Singapore looks pretty nice even at this dim and dimpsy time of the morn'.
