Flights and first thoughts!

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Well I finally did it, I made a blog. Partially to catalogue some of this journey and partially to prove to my very good friend Daniel that sometimes I'm actually good for my word! To be fair though I have only just arrived in Ho Chi Minh about 24 hours ago, even though I left about 44 hours before that. The flights and layovers were mostly uneventful for the most part. I did however meet a Cambodian doctor on the first flight who once worked for Doctors Without Borders and now is currently a public health manager in Cambodia. He told me that a regular GP makes only about $250 a month in Cambodia, which is why many people (himself included) also do private consultation or other forms of employment to supplement their income. We shared knowledge of politics and corruption in Cambodia as well as sort of comparing and contrasting the need for more environmental action and awareness in Cambodia to the let's say, no lack of it in BC. Shout out to Molly for telling me to pack my camping pillow. It worked wonders for my 12hr layover in Kunming, Yunnan province, China. Definitely would recommend the 1 layover trip to SE Asia. I went for the most dirt cheap flight and although it came to a grand total of $650CAD including taxes for a return flight, i would in the future fork up another 100 bucks for 1 less layover! Especially since facebook, google, instagram and yahoo are all banned in China. A further shoutout to Aaron and Keith for the new game of thrones book! (I finished it in the first two days). I diverge, a lot.

Anyhow I met this guy Shichen on my last flight and his girlfriend Erica met us at the airport. The importance of this story is that Erica suggested I unlock my phone and buy a Vietnamese SIM card. By dropping 200,000VND (About $15) on one of those bad boys, you get about 300sms messages. Doesn't sound amazing, but here's the kicker. Those SIM cards are packed with 19GB of data on them, which would allow me to basically have enough on the go internet for my whole trip. Not bad for $15.

So us 3 shared a cab to my hostel roughly 40 minutes away, which ran us about $2 each. I checked in at about 7pm and showered before seeing what the hostel was like. the 9 floor, 190 bed hostel was definitely a party hostel as I soon found out, and that was totally not my vibe after getting off from such a long trip. Nevertheless I got my free dinner and had a beer then texted Molly before going to sleep. Definitely am missing her quite a bit.

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Comments

[Cheryl]

Go Ben
Fun read keep them coming and good luck getting any sleep in the party hostel...!