Travel Days

We made it to Vietnam! The trip was the most  brutal that I've ever had to endure, but it also wasn't as bad as I expected. After spending my last night in the US in Tower C, we got up nice and early for our flight on Saturday morning. Pittsburgh airport was one of the smallest airports I've ever been to, but it wasn't at all crowded which was great. After a short flight to Chicago (I slept the whole way) and an even shorter layover, we finally officially left America. Our flight took us north from Chicago, up through Canada, down over Russia and China, before finally landing in Hong Kong 16 hours later. That would've been the worst part of the trip, but I ended up sleeping for roughly 70% of the flight. In Hong Kong, we had a longer layover, so we had a chance to explore the airport. We went to this really cool Chinese snack food shop. They had a whole bunch of candies and desserts, along with other snacks like dried cuttlefish and beef cubes. We also had dinner in the airport, which was really good. I had stir fried flat noodles with beef. From Hong Kong, we had one more flight to Ho Chi Minh City, and then we were finally in Vietnam! Customs and immigration were super easy to get through, and luckily all our luggage showed up with no problems. At this point, none of us had any real perception of what time it was, since we were all so messed up from the flights, but it was around 12:30am (11 hrs difference from back home). We took a big bus from the airport to the hotel, which is actually pretty nice. They have a pool and a restaurant attached, and the lobby smells like cinnamon.

We're all very excited to be here. From what we've seen so far the country is amazing, and I can't wait to explore the city. The food in particular is going to be great. I'm almost too excited to fall asleep, except I'm completely exhausted despite sleeping for the majority of the past 48 hours. Tomorrow begins Day 1, and I couldn't be more excited.