Hello Everyone!
We have safely arrived in Taipei and are counting down the hours until our next flight... 7 hours away! But they have a beautiful waiting area/lounge and clean restrooms. It's only 6:40am here, so the airport is still pretty quiet, but we're wide awake as it's 2:40pm at home. We got off to a draining start at SFO, the ticket agent at China Airlines wouldn't give us boarding passes until we could show proof of onward travel from Vietnam. We have a one-way, open ended ticket and they wanted us to show proof that we would be leaving Vietnam and not lingering indefinitely. So we got on the phone with STA (Student Travel Agency) and frantically bought tickets from Hanoi, Vietnam to Bangkok for February 21. We were caught off guard from this request to show proof of onward travel because we had already received our Vietnamese visa, and we had not heard of such a request for Vietnam. The ticket agent wouldn't give us boarding passes because if we arrived in Vietnam and customs wouldn't let us through, it would be her fault and they'd have to send us back home again! So... we bought the tickets. Hopefully they will serve as enough proof that we're moving on and won't have any more problems. After we dealt with THAT, we had to wait 45 minutes for Security. Denton was body scanned and I opted-out for the feel-up instead. I was really discouraged that we had to do it because they had just closed the line for normal security by 2 people in front of us.
By the time we made it to our gate, they were boarding our seats for the 15+ hour flight. I couldn't make up my mind whether I loved or hated the service- they were polite, but one guy lifted my seat from the recline position so the person behind me can eat. Compromising my comfort for someone else's... where's the fairness in that?! Anyway, we're here and have a long day in front of us, by the time we get to Saigon, it'll be at least 10pm USA time.
I had to sit with my seat folded forward once while the person behind me was being sick and we were being diverted to Canada because of thick fog at SeaTac. Glad you made it. A magazine I get just featured a group of lady quilters that had gone to Vietnam. Looks beautiful over there. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteAunt Ramona