Day 1
-The Excitement, The Flights and The Sleep.
As 33 travellers entered the Qantas domestic terminal at 4:30 one early morning with their parents, yawning and whinging about the time (the parents that is) the excitement built among the students to almost bursting point. After warm and sometimes tearful goodbyes the students were off to form a long queue to check in, awkwardly dragging their bags behind, a sign of things to come.
Then came a 1 hour flight to Sydney with no major disruptions or hassles. It was a very short flight, so short in fact that with all the taking off and landing an ipod or electronics of any kind was hardly of use. The realization that we were actually travelling further from our destination was actually thoroughly frustrating.
After going through security in Sydney we had to wait for quite a long time. Most people sat around reading magazines or experimenting with cameras, many took the chance to grab something to eat but overall the wait in the airport was quite uneventful. Next we boarded a flight to Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, this flight was a lovely eight hours, I was seated next to the teachers, we had lovely chats about blackboard chalk and brands of textbooks... not really, in fact it wasn't that bad, although I do wish more of the travelling was spent with my friends and I didn't realize at that point that seating format would be an omen for the near future. This trip involved lots of sleeping and some truly disturbing plane food, but the decent into Ho Chi Minh city was completely worth the 8 hours of children screaming, the city was simply a city of lego, that is the best way I can describe it, the vast, higglety-pigglety city of lego stretched on to the horizon, one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen.
Still in a daze we walked into Ho Chi Minh City airport, now lets be honest, this airport scared me a little, having never been overseas before this trip the culture shock kicked in... hard. The strange food, the change in currency and the difference in language was enough. And as the last glow of golden light fell upon the wings of the planes through the foggy sky outside the terminal I wondered what lay ahead two hours in the future in Hanoi.
For the next flight I was again seated next to the teachers, 'What a coincidence,' I thought to myself, 'two flights in a row with the teachers, the next flight will be different I bet.' I was yet to find how wrong I was. This flight was again uneventful except for some of the most uncomfortable seats which still exist today, with a big bump positioned purposefully to attack you're back and push you're head forward. The flight attendant says it was to help our backs, perhaps if we all had sort of wiggly spines it would have been better.
After we got off we left the safety of the airport and entered Hanoi. After nearly being run over three times, (in a fun way if you can imagine it) we found the safety of the bus and met our guide Phiem, the best travel guide to ever have lived. He gave us a general talk about what to expect on our way to the hotel and as we all stared at all the bikes and lack of road rules he taught us three important phrases, Cảm ơn em or thankyou, xin chao or hello and the most used and important of them all Trời ơi which meant oh my god. Apparently Trời 'bloody' ơi was also acceptable.
We then left the safety of the bus for a walk through night time Hanoi with all of our luggage. It was dirty and smelly and simply amazing. We then arrived at our hotel and were ready for bed, after a quick exploration of the rooms we all layed down and fell asleep instantly ignoring the beeping of the bikes outside.
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