Travel Day Thursday

Thursday seems so long long ago and so much has happened.  We have had a wonderful adventure already!  We have all been looking forward to the trip.  It seems we waited for so long, and then had only a couple weeks to book all our flights, hotels, get the visas etc...  Li Lin has been cute this past week.  Each morning she wakes up with an excited "there's only 5 days left!", "there's only 4 days left", etc...  This morning she woke up with a "It's today!!!  I'm going to tell everyone at school that I am leaving!"

Rykauna bought and stitched patches of the flags of all the countries she has visited.  Adding Vietnam to the list this trip!

It felt strange flying out so early Friday morning.  We got up at regular time on Thursday morning, the kids headed off for school, I headed off for work and Sara headed off to run around and deal with a few last minute items that had come up.  Throughout the day, it was surreal to think that tonight around 10:30 we will be at Toronto Pearson Airport awaiting to board our flight towards Vietnam.

After school we finished off some least minute packing, cleaning, tidying and errands and met Grand-maman for a late supper around 8 to try and fill some bellies for the long flight.  We headed home, loaded the van and a friend then drove us to the airport.  Check-in, customs and security went by in a blast and we were soon sitting in the waiting area passing time.  Things have upscaled significantly.  There are iPads at nearly every seat available for anyone to use while waiting to board the flight.

The two little ones hard at play on the iPads

 

 Our children entertained themselves with them, as well as a large 'echo chamber' where it's really fun to snap your fingers, whistle, or stomp your feet.  It reverberates and amplifies the noise and it sounds great!

The boarding was delayed by almost an hour, which doesn't sound like much but when its a 15 hour flight and its 1:45 am and we are trying to keep the kids up so they sleep on the plane..it felt long.  The staff and crew of EVA were wonderful and when we did start boarding, they did it so wonderfully fast that we made up most of the lost time. The kids traveled well and slept a decent amount.  When they were awake they did great. (Have I mentioned that we have the greatest kids around!  A pleasure to travel with)  Our flight was 15 hours straight to Taipei, Taiwan.

In the Taiwan Airport

We flew with EVA Air which is an airline based in Taiwan.  One of the interesting things about the airline (besides what we experienced in the great crew, warm smiles, comfortable planes and good food), was that they have some Hello Kitty! planes and we were hopeful that we would get one (who wouldn't want to have that on a resume!)  Alas those planes did not fly our routes.  However, the airport in Taipei does little Miss Hello Kitty very proud!

Our girls getting their picture taken with Hello Kitty.  A customs agent saw us and directed us to a... you guessed it... Hello Kitty waiting lounge!

Li Lin at play in the Hello Kitty Lounge

Our 3.5 hour flight from Taipei, Taiwan to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon), Vietnam, flew (pun for Uncle Darrell) by.  Around 10 am local time (11:00 pm Toronto time), we touched down in Vietnam.  Forecast: mostly sunny and currently 30 C.  Can live with that!  We got picked up at the airport and shuttled to our new 'home' for the next ten days - Riverside Apartments.

Here's the first bit of greenery we saw.  We can live with this!

I'll post a second blog with our first impressions of Vietnam.