Eventually off the ground

They say better late than never. It all seemed to easy, after the cancellation of two flights yesterday today was going to be a piece of cake.  Yay, my flight is called and we go to the gate, lots of us.  We settle in waiting for the boarding call.  And we wait, and we wait.  And then we get the announcement that the co-pilot is stuck in a traffic jam way up the line due to a major car accident.  Long weekend, all stand by pilots are either away or live up the coast and can't get in either.

Many of this mornings passengers are people I recognised from last night so the chit chat starts and most of realise that we are going cut it very close for international connections.  Bother is not the terminology used but you get the drift.  We are told by ground crew that our flights will be held up for us so with that piece of encouragement we sit and wait.

Wasn't long and we were on our way. That's cool, we will have 30 minutes to do the terminal run, go through immigration and get to our flight. And sure enough we made it.  After the rush through the airport we get on board, settle in (to my bank of three seats - better than business) and are told we are going to be delayed because some passenger has decided not to travel.   Well, stranger things have happened.

10:10am and we are on our way.  I watch a movie, Frances Ha, which was a hoot, eat my teriyaki salmon steak, have a sleep stretched out across my seat, and check out all the travel pdf's I downloaded trying to decide how I am going to spend my time in HCMC, once I have had my PHO BO of course.  Very little of my trip has been planned but as I was only going to be in HCMC for a couple of days and had a few things I wanted to do, I had planned that bit.  Well, they say that plans are made to be changed so lets see what tomorrow may bring.

Tears pour down my face as Whale Rider finishes.  What an amazing movie and so glad I was locked in a seat and couldn't do the usual movie watching thing of doing a hundred things while watching.  What an amazingly powerful movie. I can see why my rellies in the states have a rather distorted view of what life in NZ is really like.  They have  seen it and loved it.  I can only presume that they have jumped to the conclusion that the movie portrayed modern NZ city living.

Really really want a chocolate right now.  Airline food is just that.  Meant to be eaten on an airplane.  But every girl needs chocolate after every meal and it just ain't coming.  Gotta have chocolate, just a tad; I don't want to appear greedy.  OK good case for business or fist case, they always have chocolate, in fact even choices of chocolate.

So another update as soon as I have a wifi connection but in the meantime I have Narita airport to look forward to and another wee break before my next flight.  Fingers crossed I get away on time.

OK an update on that.  For an indescribable reason did not like Narita airport and couldn't get out fast enough.  Bumped all the way down to HCMC and fell in love the moment I got out of the terminal. Amazing houses, tall skinny and beautifully decorated, trees everywhere, lovely parks.  Cute wee hotel.  All this of course at 1:am, pitch dark and my eyes hanging out if my head.  Been a long day but 36 hours after I originally left home my adventure is starting.

Cuppa and a few hours kip and Ill be hitting those streets tomorrow.