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Well, it’s time to go home. We were met by a girl from the travel agency and a driver to take us to the airport because our guide needed to take Joyce and Anna later. And more power to him. That should be fun. She was fairly young and quite unusual in that she was overweight. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was just something we didn’t see much of in the Vietnamese population. But she was very nice and got us squared away. The only thing was (and we didn’t realize it at the time or we would have said something), they didn’t give us our boarding passes for the US flights when we checked in. Just Hanoi to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to LA. So that would get interesting later.
We were plenty early (2+ hours) so we wandered the Lucky Souvenir shops but didn’t find anything good or anything we hadn’t seen already. We acquired some emergency food (which would come in handy later) and hung out waiting for the flight.
The flight to Hong Kong was only an hour and a half but they still served breakfast. Airline austerity hasn’t reached Asia yet (thankfully). They seem to be able to do drink service in about half the time as US flights as well.
We got to Hong Kong and had a few hours to wait so we went looking for food and found what was clearly an American food place because it was called Beef and Liberty, our two greatest exports. And it was only $50 for a couple of burgers and fries. Also very American.
Time to head to LA. When we boarded we knew we were towards the back of the plane based on our seat number (70) but it turned out we were in the last row! And not only that, we weren’t across the aisle from each other like I requested (and had gotten on the LA to HK flight). Marion got the middle seat and it didn’t recline. So much for my efforts with the travel people. And worst of all it was FREEZING back there. But other than that, it wasn’t bad. There was convenient access to the toilet and some open space to stand and stretch. And, unlike some other long distance flights I’ve been on, the toilets didn’t start smelling halfway through and the lineup of people wasn’t too bad either. And best of all, since we were going in the direction of the jet stream, the flight time was 2 hours shorter than on the way over. It was still 12 hours but at least not 14.
The food was pretty bad again, which was unfortunate. But the emergency food came in handy. I watched “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot’ about John Callahan the cartoonist. An interesting movie. Then half of the latest Mission Impossible but it got boring. And 4 episodes of Bob’s Burgers which did not.
Nancy had told me about the book Hue, 1968, about the decisive battle for Hue during the Vietnam War. I had heard it was good but hadn’t picked it up yet. So I thought I’d try it for the flight home. I tried to buy it on Amazon from Hanoi and lo and behold, it said it wasn’t available. Interesting. A little Communist oversight going on. But I got online in Hong Kong and was able to buy it there so nyaah to the communists. And it was a good read. I got about 25% through it on the plane. It was even more interesting having just been there and heard about the history and the people and the culture. Some of the points the author was making really rang true. The one example I really remember was an incident where someone was killed in the confusion that resulted from a North Vietnamese and a South Vietnamese not understanding each other because of the dialect/accent differences.
We got to LA and it was clear where were back in America. We really are a country of waddling fat people. Not everyone of course but it’s really noticeable.
Once again we landed out in the sticks and had to take a bus to the main terminal. We were early enough that they hadn’t posted our flight yet so we weren’t sure where we were supposed to go. We at least figured out which terminal we needed to be in. We were at terminal 4 and had to get to terminal 6 so there was a lengthy walk and we also had to go through security a few more times.
We got to our gate with a few hours to spare so it was time to look for food. We could tell we must be pretty tired since we kept getting into and out of lines as we tried to decide what to eat. I don’t actually remember what we got. I think we went with nothing, just eating the remaining snacks in our carry on.
It was along about this time as I started to think about the last leg of the flight that I realized I had left my (expensive) noise-cancelling headphones on the Hong Kong flight. It had taken us close to an hour to get from where we landed to our current gate, not to mention multiple security checks and not to mention they probably wouldn’t even let us into the international terminal without boarding passes. So going back wasn’t an option. I tried to call Cathay but that turned out to not be possible. After 15 minutes of web searching I found a local LA phone number but their office was closed for the day. Their main office was in Hong Kong so that wasn’t going to work. In the end after a few days at home I found an email address and a very nice gentleman in lost and found took a look but didn’t find them, despite the fact they were still attached to my seat, so it wouldn’t have taken much effort on the flight attendant’s part to figure out who’s they were. But I guess they’d rather have the headphones. I suppose a passenger could have taken them but since we were among the last 10 people leaving the plane, that seems less likely. Still, that was the worst thing that happened to us in 3 weeks, so I can’t really complain too much.
Les and Sharon were at the airport to meet us, with a rose for each of us, which was nice. It turned out they had gotten us a bouquet which we discovered when we got home. Along with a bouquet from Marie, our pet sitter. And, of course, a couple of very unhappy kitties who yelled at us for 2 or 3 days afterwards (probably deserved).
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