Rule of thumb… just because someone nods, doesn’t mean they understand.
Case-in-point – the 5 of us caught 2 taxis on the way to the airport to fly to Da Nang. A fairly easy thing you’d think… but no. Deb & I were in one taxi and I said, “domestic”, I got a friendly smile and a nod from the taxi driver. After a few stalls and some incredibly bad driving, accompanied by more smiles and giggles, we eventually made it to the airport, some distance behind the others.
As we go inside to “departures” – no Laura, Ben or Hannah to be seen. We get a phone call from Laura asking where we are, we say we’re here… can’t see each other. We ask a guard, he points us out the door then in the next one. The next guy says upstairs… still nothing. Only after we asking a cleaning lady does she say, “next terminal – big building” does it click we’re in the wrong bloody spot!
I also forgot to mention that we’re carrying all our bags, we’re running super late and the others are busy trying to stall the people checking us in to allow us to get there. So Deb & I sprint as fast as we can Amazing Race-style across to the next terminal, finally find the departures and sweating our bums off, we check-in, 5 minutes after it officially closed. The rest of the trip to Hoi An was uneventful.
For those thinking of a visit to Vietnam… Flights are good here. Ho Chi Minh City to Hoi An only takes 1h10 and costs about $45. The planes are Airbus 330s (the big ones usually used for international flights) and it ran on time.
Off the plane and you’re greeted with essentially nothing in Da Nang except for heaps of people trying to get you to travel with them – taxis, chauffeurs etc. A maxi-taxi costs about $25 for the 45minute drive to Hoi An.
I’ll write about what we’ve done in Hoi An in another post…