About a month ago I found out I’d being going to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC aka Saigon) for work, and since I’ve never been to Asia I was super excited. I will actually be going twice which is great, because this first trip is only three days on the ground. Yep, that’s right – 20 hours of travel, 72 hours on the ground, and another 20 hours of travel. All just two weeks after I’ve returned from Iceland – craziness! And oh yeah, about two days before leaving we decided to spend one of the days in Cambodia…
But let me tell you, flying business class makes all the difference in the world, even if you’re on Northwest (like I was). The ability to stretch out makes it so much more bearable. As usual I didn’t sleep much and was happy to be nearing Tokyo until the pilot told us it was gonna be bumpy for the last 30 minutes and descent. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought until we got near the ground and then the plane was really rocky as we landed. But we landed and that’s all that matters. Tokyo Narita airport was not nearly as bustling and hectic as I envisioned it to be – it was quiet, calm and fairly empty. Maybe because it was Sunday night? We killed an hour in the lounge, then boarded our flight to HCMC.
Movies watched: 3 (“I Love You Man,” “My Life in Ruins,” and parts of “Star Trek”)
Once you land in Japan, you feel like it should be just a short hop over to Vietnam, but no. We still had another SIX hour flight to go. Amazingly enough the Tokyo-HCMC flight is NW #1. The aircraft we were on did not seem worthy of being flight #1 though, perhaps because teh flight was only about a third full. There were only three of us in business class, and the seats were not nearly as nice as the trans-pacific ones. Oh well, still better than coach class! We also had very diverse crew – all american, white, black, asian, male, female. It was not what I was expecting at all on that flight.
Movies watched: 1 (“Confessions of a Shopaholic”)
We landed in HCMC around 11:00pm, picked up our visas, found our driver and headed to the Sheraton. since it was late Sunday night, there wasn’t much traffic out, but we still passed several folks on motorbikes. I was surprised to see them wearing helmets and later found out this is a new law. The Sheraton is really nice – definitely a step up from my usual accommodations. It was a long day, but I’m in Vietnam!
KMJ travels 