Day one (and two?) journey to Vietnam

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Greetings! While I have a place with internet, I'll try to update my blog. (Of course we all know how well I kept up with Prague -- ha!)

Day One of our trip to Vietnam:

We left Portland at 9AM, bound for Seattle, Seoul, and eventually Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City). The trip to Seattle was short, and we thought that our layover would be way, way too long. We arrived before 10am and our next leg of the journey wasn't scheduled until after 1PM! It turned out to be a good thing that we had so much time on our hands because we had to check in with Asiana Airlines once we were in Seattle. This was the one downside to our trip over -- there were maybe 10 people in front of us in line, maybe, and yet it still took over 90 minutes to get up to the counter and get checked in! We were told it's because Vietnamese nationals don't need passports, so there is some sort of long drawn out process to check in their tickets. I have no idea if that's true, all I know is that it took FOREVER. On the upside, I had never been to the Seattle airport, found it comfortable, and we still had enough time to find something to eat. I chose Mexican food, of course.

We left Seattle for Seoul in a Boeing 777, a large plane and actually very comfortable even in economy class -- I was surprised! This leg of the trip was about 11 hours, but it actually felt shorter than some flights I've taken to Pennsylvania, probably because the seats were more comfortable on this plane. None of us really slept much, maybe Thu had the most sleep with 2-3 hours, but that's not saying much. We watched movies and read and I cross-stitched for a while. It seemed like very few minutes the flight attendants were pushing food, so we were all very full by the time we landed. The main meal was great -- bi bim bap, my favorite Korean dish.

Our plane touched down in Seoul a bit early, so our layover was 3.5 hours. We discovered that the Seoul airport has a "Korean cultural heritage center" that allows "foreigners only" to make a craft of some sort, so we all participated. We're looking forward to stopping by again on our return trip to make something else. :-)

The flight from Seoul to Saigon was another 5.5 hours. By the time we landed, it was just after midnight Monday morning in Saigon, and our bodies had NO IDEA what time it was. We had been up for over 30 hours and were exhausted. Thankfully the trip from Saigon to our village was only 45 minutes, and sometime after 2AM we were able to sleep....until we all woke up at 6:30, unable to adjust to the time change.

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Photos

Saying goodbye to the US
Picture of Seattle outside the plane window.

Crafty in Korea
Our handicrafts in Seoul.