12:40 Flight for Hanoi
Having just turned down the current book I am reading ‘The Long Way Round’, I look up at the departure sign at gate 5 of Ho Chi Minh City’s domestic airport – eagerly awaiting our next departure; our third flight of the day, our final flight of the day.
The trip which we had been earning to do ever since flying out of Hanoi in 2009 ( our first visit to Vietnam) started 11 hours ago with our departure from Perth International Airport on a Jetstar flight to Singapore.
I had only flown Jetstar once before, only years earlier to Singapore for Michelle’s birthday, all I could recall of the flight was the defiant decision made to never fly with them again, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall why. Sure enough years on, an opportunity presented itself that we could not ignore; Perth to Ho Chi Minh City return for $450.00 AUD. I slouched over the laptop starring down the fare on the Jetstar website. Okay, no free food, no free entertainment, no alcohol presenting myself with the cons for the trip, almost as fast as the cons presented themselves I had reasoned most of them out; nothing a travel laptop and some snacks in carry-on couldn’t fix, and as for the alcohol, well, I’ll just have to enjoy a few in the departure lounge, besides, $450 return was brilliant compared to our last flight to Vietnam.
As we boarded our flight and found our seats the reason why I so loathed Jetstar hit me like a freight train – with my knees pressed hard against the seat in front of me. Despite having the aisle there was literally no leg room to stretch out on these long flights, and especially being a redeye, the notion of sleep seemed futile at best. Fortunately for us, Michelle booked herself the window, and I had the aisle, and no one booked the seat between us. In the scheme of things it wasn’t much, but at least we could attempt to negotiate the stiff unrelenting airline chairs as a three seater couch rather than individual sardine chairs that they were.
After what seemed to be an eternity of tossing and turning and continual jarring of the legs we made it to Singapore for our two hour layover for our connecting flight on yet another Jetstar bird to Ho Chi Minh.
Fortunately for us, rather than a five hour redeye, the flight to Vietnam was only an hour long and after our Burger King breakfast in the Singapore terminals we were at least a little more awake to enjoy the short flight to Vietnam.
Departing the international terminal in Ho Chi Minh we were mutually greeted with both the simmering 38 degree heat and a sense of déjà vu, having walked out the exact same terminal doors two years earlier to this very month, only this time rather than jumping into our private transfer heading for the capital centre we dragged our luggage from the International Terminal down the road to the Domestic Terminal to check-in for our third flight of the day, and gratefully our final, Vietnam Airlines flight to Hanoi.