There is a certain anxiety when you have to get up early, pick up everything, pack it up and catch a plane.
The next time my eyes opened and I glanced at my Nike band, now on my wrist, it was 5.29am. Lovely.
Yay. There is a certain relief when the hour arrives. There, it is done, no need to worry about it any longer. There is a completion, no matter how much you may not want to go home.
We had half an hour. I had a shower, which took five minutes. Sam had a shower, which took twenty five minutes. And then it was 6am. We were good to go, as Sam had packed everything he could before we went to sleep. I’d have offered to pack and even if he let me, which is doubtful, he’d only take over halfway through, a quarter of the way through, as I begun, with “No, no not that way,” or, sigh, “You are not doing it right,” or, “Here, let me do it.”
We hit the foyer at 6.03 and our booked taxi was already waiting out the front, in the still, only-quiet-early, Ho Chi Minh City morning light. Our driver hunched over the steering wheel, gazing upwards towards the foyer desk, strumming his fingers on the dashboard. I struggled out the door with the suitcase, as Sam hesitated at the desk while the receptionist headed up to our room to check the mini bar contents. Not one bellboy in sight. What was that about, I thought, as I struggled down the steps? Bump, bump, bump. The taxi driver didn’t rush to my aid either, what does a boy have to do, I thought? It was kind of unusual, I have to say, usually, they are hovering around you like seagulls trying to snatch hot chips from your paper plate, as they reach for any bag you may have in your possession.
The roads were clear, well, relatively, but still we drove slowly. A Lexus 4WD set the snails pace despite nothing in front of it. We crawled along behind it. “Come on Auntie. You drive Lexus. I could shit faster than this,” I said to Sam. He laughed. (There is a YouTube video, look it up)
All the streets were relatively empty, just a few hundred motor scooters in either lane whizzing somewhere, why did we have to drive so slow. Come on. Look at the watch. Go around him. Look at the watch.
We turned a corner, away from the Lexus. “Just one moment, so sorry,” said the driver, suddenly. We were stopping for petrol. What the? We had plenty of time really, but still the traveller angst spoke to me somewhere inside. The driver chatted to the petrol attendant as though he had all the time in the world. I noticed that he had a nice smile and he laughed easily. His eyes sparkled when his face beamed.
The morning then seemed free and easy and relaxed. A smile, shiny like the sun, makes the world spin easier. Always. Okay, maybe I’m shallow.
Ho Chi Minh City airport was surprisingly quiet. The sun was crisp.
We hadn’t checked in online, where usually we do and just do a bag drop, but this morning, the check in line was far shorter than the bag drop line. I guess, everybody is checking in online nowadays which now appeared to be defeating the purpose, lucky for us.
There was a girl in front of us with excess luggage. Of course. There’s always one. She had on boots, what looked like electric blue baggy sports shorts, a black singlet and a black hoodie. Her skin was a little too fake tanned and her black hair was a little too wavy, made so by some sort of hair appliance, no doubt. She was given the options by the check in girl and she just stood there trying to decide. Come on, today would be good, I thought. And she just stood there. She asked all the same questions and was given all the same answers and she just stood there again. Then she ask the same questions yet again and she was yet again given the same answers. And she just stood there. What do you think is going to happen, I thought? Was she waiting for some sort of divine travel intervention? Then we all stood there still and silent, until the check in girl suggested she move away to ponder her options. And yet she just stood. My mouth was forming into words, I was about to speak, when the check in girl again suggested she move away, with hand movements, as though she was directing traffic. And finally Miss Excess Baggage stepped away hesitatingly… and the travel world breathed a huge sigh of relief.
We ordered Pho and watched the planes take off and land. The Pho turned out to be four times as much as normal and, in fact, more expensive than the Pho we buy in Victoria Street back at home. We didn’t have enough Dong to pay for it. But they accepted all currencies, which was just as well considering the price. A complicated negotiation ensued where we used all of our Dong, three hundred thousand, and we used Australian dollars, 20 of them. We seemed to be handing over a fist full of dollars. Still, we were getting the food we wanted.
“How will you give the change, as we don’t really want Dong, as we are, obviously, leaving the country?”
“The change will be in American dollars.”
The soup was passed to us. The Vietnamese coffee was handed to us. And we were given one, crisp American dollar in change.
“One dollar?” I said to Sam.
He shrugged.
No idea, I thought.
We ate our food and gazed out of the window, gazing down at the shinny parked jets.
“You don’t see any Jumbos around much any more, do you?”
“No, I guess not,” said Sam. “Too old.”
And right at that moment, I kid you not, a bloody big pale blue Jumbo appeared stage left, exactly on queue. They are huge, they really are. It looked like a huge 1970’s American sedan, compared to the sleek 2000’s European sedans parked at the gates, as it trundled out to the runway.
The flight seemed to go quickly and we landed in KL. As we landed, there were hectares and hectares of some sort of crop.
“What is that,” I asked Sam. “Is that palm oil?”
“That is palm oil,” said Sam.
There they were, palm oil crops as far as the eye could see. No really, to the horizon. Still, I guess, as long as it isn’t taking away native habitats, it’s okay. Isn’t it? It is the orang-utans that is the point of contention and not the palm oil itself? It being unnecessary and bad for us, withstanding.
“We’re going to the shitty KL airport,” complained Sam. “The shit airport on the way over and now on the way back. Why not the good airport?”
“We’re only here for two hours, don’t worry.”
Grumble.
The plane landed on the tarmac and we climbed down the stairs onto the bitumen. There were covered walkways that wend their way to the buildings some where in the distance, passed a huge number of parked passenger jets, any number of them potentially being refuelled. And some idiot lit a cigarette. None of us said anything to him, we just grumbled. One of the ground staff yelled out to him from across the way, but our smoker just ignored him and the ground staff didn’t follow it up. I was amazed. I imagined an explosion and a a fireball at any moment... still, I could have told him to put it out, I guess.
Everybody walked like sheep, at the speed of the person in front, which, unfortunately, was slow. “Oh come on!” I hate slow walkers.
“Don’t make my ears bleed,” pleaded Sam. “Nobody else ever listens to you.”
“Well, um?” I could have been hurt, but I knew what he meant.
The barricades that penned us in, suddenly broke open on either side and we were able to over take the morons in front who couldn’t set their own pace in an empty paddock. They broke open several times at varying places and I was able to shoot ahead even leaving Sam behind. I shot in the door and headed up the stairs two steps at a time. I looked back once I’d got to the top to see Sam at the bottom giving me “that look” pointing at the door I had sprinted passed in my rush to be the first to the top of the stairs, just to prove my point. Sadly, I had gone the wrong way and then I had to come back down the stairs sheepishly with my tail between my legs. Boo hoo.
The smoking room at KL must be the worst. “Of course, it is the old airport,” Sam said. That look. No sympathy what so ever. I knew where it was from the trip over and I headed straight there.
We bought cakes, two custard buns and a piece of layer cake. The problem was that we were just short of cash, by 20 ringgit cents. A nice Aussie chick gave us 20c so we could buy the three cakes we wanted. Sam noted that the prices were back to normal, he was still cross about the soup. He had 50 ringgit… always organised. We'd already used it to buy two Nasi Lemak earlier.
I headed back to the smoking room, for one last gasper before the flight.
Then it was time to board. The skies had turned black beyond the terminal windows, we wondered if that meant for a bumpy take off? Or, at least, Sam predicted it was going to be a bumpy take off… but, it wasn’t.
We left right on time, 13.40 to the minute. Does that ever happen in Australia?
There were five planes in front of us on the tarmac, three Air Asia, a Jumbo cargo plane (yes, another one. I guess they are flown as cargo planes now a days) and one Malaysian Airline. I timed for the 1.25 (or whatever it is) minute time gap between each take off… which we got, I am happy to report.
And that is where I closed my laptop and laid my head back and closed my eyes.
Sam has a liking for telling me what time it was and how long we had to fly, despite me telling him that I don’t want to know the time, or look at the time when I am on a long flight. It amuses him. I am sure he thinks he is being funny. I just give him dirty looks and object for the umpteenth time.
I read my book for quite a while, but then they dimmed the lights, as if to annoy me.
The last two hours seemed interminable, not the least because of Sam’s annoying time keeping… and sharing.
We were exhausted when we climbed into the back of the Statesman taxi and directed the driver to where we wanted to go.
I turned off the bedside lamp at 1.11am.
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