July 19th, 2018
July 19th travel day
Well all good things must come to an end. As must my time in Chiang Mai. Our flight to Ho Chi Min leaves at 2:25pm. Vietjet though, so who really knows right?? I think their on time record is about 10%. For us it doesn’t really matter other than Vanna and Ritchie will be sitting and waiting for us at airport. But I’m more concerned about Rachael and Anna’s 10:50pm flight being late as they must be on a 4am flight back to Vancouver (via Hong Kong). We had enough time after arriving at airport for a bit of lunch with a character from back home. Not super proud of this meal choice, but I do love a good corn pie!
Sure enough, our flight is ‘delayed 30 minutes’. We board at 2:40pm (yes that’s more than 30 minutes) but they manage to get us in the air by 3:00. So that’s undoubtably some kind of record. I am LUCKY enough to be sitting next to a man from Atlanta who CLEARLY is craving someone to talk to. He just retired, gave away and sold all his crap and is referring to himself as a ‘vagabond retiree’. He has been traveling for a grand total of 7 days, so it would be interesting to see what he’s like with a few months of this under his belt. I now know stuff about this guy (a perfect stranger) I shouldn’t know, like about his brother’s death at 63 from prostrate cancer with no will, and how he owed IRS $600,000 so they had to sell all the equipment from his chiropractic clinic to pay the debt. His nasty divorce from his ungrateful wife who was a middle school teacher that decided one day to be a lawyer so he put her through law school then she decided she didn’t like it so went back to teaching right before she walked out on him, his fat cat that he wrote into the sales agreement with the 24 year old ‘Mexican girl’ he sold his house to (but his daughter will take food to every so often). That he wears size 13 shoes and that his son lives in Denver and even though he gave him his car, he only wants to see him once a year. The 32 year old Philippino girl with a five year old son that he thinks he will marry that he met online last fall and has visited one time. Anyway, you get the idea-2 longest hours of my life. You meet all types on airplanes…..
Arrived in one piece to Ho Chi Min and the visa process went smoothly, immigration went smoothly, MY BAG ARRIVED, Ritchie there to pick us up. Heard from Rachael and they were ready to head to airport.
I was expecting the minivan ride to Da Lat to be ~5 hours. It ended up being 7 😳. But at least we had private van, it was comfortable, seats reclined and I had my little travel blankets (thank you Hong Kong airlines) so that around 10pm, we laid back, curled up and rested. It cost $150 total for the driver and van. Flights for 5 would have been more than twice that, so all in all a good deal, plus we could go straight from airport on our own schedule.
Heard from Rachael when we arrived at hotel at 1:15am, they arrived in Bangkok! All checked in and at gate for their next leg! They’re doing great getting home 👍👍
We are staying at a nice hotel but the down side is our room faces the main street, (which is a MAIN street) so I got a sum total of maybe 3 hours sleep as i couldn’t fall asleep until close to 2:30am and the horns and trucks and nonsense started by about 5am. Not sure if I’ll ask for another room? It’s really loud. Breakfast 100% Asian food other than an egg station. It’s 64 degrees here this morning. I noticed right away last night there’s no air con. But If it’s temps like that, we won’t need one. I’m going to need a sweater in fact. (Which I don’t have)
I’m remembering the differences between Thailand and Vietnam now 🤣
