The last time we were in HCMC was in 2014 and I got pretty sick, and that coloured my impression of it, unsurprisingly. Happily, this time I was able to enjoy it much more and revise my first impressions.
Continue readingTag Archives: transit
Back to Vietnam! The joys of transit
Who would have thought, back in 2019, that it would be almost three years before international travel was possible again? Even in December 2021 when we started planning this trip, the international borders were still closed and people shook their heads when I mentioned wanting to revisit Vietnam.
But I had some long service leave that had to be used, frequent flyer points burning a hole in my pocket, and moths flying out of my passport, so I thought why not book (with generous cancellation policies, natch) and see what happened.
Continue readingSeven Weeks Away – Reims day 1 (or one and a half…)
This trip is really pushing the boundaries of my blog title – seven and a half weeks away, which is at the same time scary and exciting!
I’m in Reims, France right now, finishing off Day 1 of this trip. More on that later though, as I’ve been told in no uncertain terms I MUST blog about the trip over.
I’d booked the flights for this trip on Etihad, with Virgin points. Haven’t flown them before, but they just started flying from Perth a few weeks ago, and are cheaper than Singapore. One of the perks of business class with them, even on points, is that you get a chauffeur pickup, which is lovely, and makes sure you get to the airport nice and early!
One of the other perks of being there nice and early was that a staff member pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to pay to upgrade to First, since they had a plane change and it had First on it, which this flight won’t be doing regularly. $720. I thought about it for about three seconds and whipped out the credit card. Woohoo!
In my suite 1A!
Filed under France
(not a) Holiday in Cambodia
So is everyone humming the Dead Kennedys now?
I’m on a school volunteer trip this time, to Cambodia, as the title says. We’re (that’s a bunch of kids from my school and another boys’ school) helping out for 10 days at the Cambodian Children’s Fund Community Centres. Then I’ve got two days of R&R booked in Bangkok on the way back, to do a bit of Christmas shopping.
We arrived in Phnom Penh last night on Thai Airways via Bangkok. The PER-BKK flight was good, a bit bumpy at times, but the new A330 had quite wide comfy seats in economy, and even right down the back I managed a half hour doze after watching Modern Family and Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. The Gluten Free meal was as unappetising as ever: as my neighbours were chowing down on a gorgeous-smelling curry, I had a chunk of unidentifiable white fish with some steamed potatoes. Tasty. Interesting breakfast, in any case!
Bangkok Airport is huge and snaking, and after one of the staff had his duty free confiscated at customs since the PER staff hadn’t sealed the bag, a few of us got separated from the group and traversed most of the snaking hugeness of D concourse looking for the rest! We eventually caught up with the rest of the group and sat down with some Pad Thai and unreadable Coke for lunch.
The short flight from BKK – PNH was short, in a much smaller 737 with much smaller seats! The cabin crew managed to throw a snack at us before we came down in PNH with a jarring thump – as the students said, it was as if the pilots thought we were already on the ground and just dropped the plane a couple of metres. Nice bounce!
PNH airport is pretty small, and we went through customs and passport control with no problems before loading our thousands of bags onto the buses and heading to the hotel which will be our home for the next 12 days.
The streets are very busy, with hundreds of scooters vying for space amongst cars, tuk-tuks, buses and trucks. As I’ve seen elsewhere, traffic signals are a guide rather than a rule, and we were amazed to be weaving our way through intersections where scooters especially were creeping forward and creeping forward until there was only a very narrow channel for the “right of way” traffic to get through!
The Goldiana Hotel is quite comfortable – airconditioning and a pool which is all I’m after really! There’s a supermarket around the corner which stocks such things as tim tams and polony! Pretty civilised!
Filed under Cambodia
Transit – Dubai
And we’re off!
This trip is an epic journey around Morocco and then the UK. We’ve been planning for about a year, and hopefully we’ve got everything sorted. House/dog/cat-sitter, luggage, credit card… oh, and passport!
We started off awaiting the red eye to Dubai in the Emirates lounge, courtesy of my credit card (Citibank Emirates card if anyone’s interested – you get Skywards FF, a pair of passes to the Emirates lounge and chauffeur to and from the airport once a year – woo!) Since I’m starting off with a cold, I didn’t think I’d have anything to drink in the lounge, but then R spied an opened bottle of Veuce Clicquot in the ice bucket, so I couldn’t very well leave that lying there unattended…
That combined with the cold and flu tablets I took once I was on the plane meant that I actually managed to get some sleep! I know I dozed off for at least two stretches of an hour each, which for me is pretty amazing, especially in economy!
Now we’re sitting in the business class lounge in Dubai waiting for our Business Class upgrade (thank you credit card frequent flyer points again!) It’s a huge lounge, but there are huge amounts of people, too! Hardly any pairs of seats left, so we jumped on the first one we found.
See you in Casablanca!
Filed under UAE
Rome day 4
Goodbye Roma!
I took a quick run out to the closest souvenir shop before we had to check out, as I’d not got nearly enough pressies for everyone at home, and within 10 mins had dropped 80E on souvenirs. Yay!
Filed under italy
Two Weeks Away 