Dear Mom,
We’ve arrived! We were only delayed a couple of hours, and that was in ICN Seoul, which is a great airport to be stranded in, if there’s going to be a delay anywhere.
Our sleeping strategy worked amazingly. We boarded the plane Stateside at lunchtime, and we each watched half of a movie and took a sleeping pill before they came by with an airplane meal, and then we put on eye masks and dropped off for something like 6 hours of sleep, which is on-rhythm for Vietnam. When we woke up, we only had 3-4 more hours of flying to do before laying over at Korea. Stayed awake the rest of the travels, and only slept again when it was about 10pm Vietnam-time.
When we got to the hotel we were dangerously alert, so we took another round of sleeping pills and I slept through to 7am. It’s about that, now, and Janet is still sleeping. I’m thinking I’ll go rent us a motorbike after breakfast.
Hotel Thi Tai Boutique (it’s even better in real life than the pictures make it out to be) is 200,000 VND by taxi. The meter only read 130K but there’s a 50K surcharge for them to enter the airport and it was the middle of the night, so we paid 200 and were happy with the taxi-van.
After customs in Da Nang, we each got our luggage and then wandered over to the telephone SIM card booth. You can pay cash in VND or USD. I had 500K Dong with me but it wasn’t enough for two SIM cards so I had to break $100. The guy who was helping us had no trouble getting our phones swapped over, and showed us that with the airport wifi off we could successfully pull data and navigate the internet. Incidentally, there are no ATMs inside the airport, so you have to have cash. I paid with $100 bill and got $75 in change in VND.
Photos from our travel day:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NoEYtgEZxDU9Fjwn9
Today we will keep busy. Caffeine in the morning and keep hydrating all day. Tonight one final round of sleeping pills, whether we feel like it or no. Let’s kick jetlag outta here!
Love,
Tim