[Travel] Experience Taking Vietnam Airlines to Seoul, Incheon Airport from Singapore, Changi International Airport

Hi all,

I'm back with travel reviews! This time round for my flight experience with Vietnam Airlines. I booked my tickets in May 2015 for my summer school in July 2015. I booked a return trip and paid SGD529.10. I agree that this is really cheap for an air ticket to South Korea, the land of Kpop and amazing Korean dishes. However, I was utterly disgusted at their sales tactics.

I booked the flight in the evening at 5pm on a Saturday over my laptop, extremely delighted to get my tickets at just SGD100 which was the Special deal tickets. However, after I attempted payment via VISA, the screen indicated an "Invalid action, payment unsuccessful", and then I refreshed the page as saw that the Special Deal tickets were sold out. I was worried I had to spent SGD1K on SQ kind of tickets so I reluctantly bought the SGD150 tickets, spending SGD100 more instead.

To my horror, the next day from morning to night, when I looked through the fares, the Special Deal tickets were back again at the price of 100SGD! Not only the next day, even in Mid July when I checked through the webpage, the SGD100 air tickets were still available. I WAS SO PISSED, because when I emailed the sales management team, they said strictly no refunds, but "you can choose to cancel your reservation and pay the administration fee for cancelation".

I was just too pissed to reply him, because it was totally stupid. I already had keyed in payment information and everything, but payment was rejected just because I was a few seconds late, but yet the sale tickets were continually available at the same price for 1 month?! Not too sure if I was just unlucky or what.

Remember, when choosing your flight timings, always make sure transit timing is as short as possible, as there are connecting flights that make you transit for 12 hours or even up to one whole day. Unless you intend to tour Vietnam then please see the date and time of transit arrival and departure carefully.

I took the 8.30pm flight and we reached Vietnam local time 10pm, it was a 1 hour plus flight. Note that the airplanes are not linked to a gate, so you basically need to climb down the stairs and enter the airport bus shutte to bring you to the terminal. The flight to Ho Chi Minh came with food and beverages plus wet wipes upon boarding the plane. It was a really small and old plane, but decent and worth for the price paid. After landing, there would be a long queue for transit because most of the passengers are transiting to Korea too. You just need to go through a customs check, and you can head to the gate. There's wifi at the Ho Chi Minh airport, which made the transit of 2h 25min bearable.

Dinner part 1

Amazing skyline of HCM

Upon arrival at HCM

 Similarly, to board the next Vietnam Airlines plane, you will need to board the gate which is at the ground floor for you to board the shuttle bus that brings you to the airplane itself. This was an old Boeing too, but it was an even older, smaller, more crammed and air conditioning which was equivalent to Sauna. It was really hot, so my plane buddy and I had a hard time falling asleep. Thank god I managed to sleep for 2 hours, but without any blanket on since it was really too warm. My buddy on the other hand, was fiddling with her MacBook the entire time, editing videos. Kudos to her for not sleeping. The food was good too, with beverages like alcoholic drinks served. For some tips on booking, you can check the plane model on the VN website to see if its a big or small plane. The big plane I took from Seoul back to HCM to SG was super luxurious and comfortable. So you can actually plan beforehand if you are very particular about space and comfort.

Dinner part 2 aka Supper

First sign upon waking up after a 2 hour nap

Upon landing, thank god the plane was connected to a gate although our gate was the extreme last gate of the terminal (which means a lot of walking). The travelators made it much better, thankfully.

 

All in all, it was a good experience. I find that it was worth the money to travel with VN, however, if you ever see the Special Deal tickets ever sold out, wait for the next day to check back. Chances are it will be available the next day. The transit was good as I got to experience climbing down the airplane, and being able to capture photos of yourself standing on the ground with the airplane in the background.

On my return flight from SG to HCM, I met this really cute baby who was fed milk every single time she cried. (Pardon my bare face without make up, my skin condition got really bad when I was in Korea)

Let me know if you need more info on the flight experience(:

Cheers,
Rachel