Saigon (finally!)
So I’m back in Saigon for the second time, but this time it’s the real deal. No more unplanned encounters with hard-drinking Vikings, this time I’m picking Meka up from the airport.
My bus leaves Nha Trang at 7 in the morning. Plenty of time to get back according the the bus company. 8 hour trip at the maximum. At 7:30pm I’m starting to get a little worried as Meeks is getting in at 9pm. And she is not the kind of person you want to leave by herself in an unfamiliar airport on her first ever trip overseas. She will find a way to wander off and Vietnam will swallow her, never to be seen or heard from again.
I manage to arrive with an hour to spare, book a hotel room (spared no expense!), have a quick shower, and a motorbike taxi to the airport. Her plane is on time, but no Meka. I watch the bag tags of people exiting the gates and see the amount of 3K551’s quickly dwindle. No Meka. It is possible that she has gotten lost in the air somewhere between New Zealand and Vietnam. I would not put this past her. But an hour and a half after her flight arrived, I finally see her coming out the gates. Turned out there was some weird problem with her visa that took a while to sort out.
We get a taxi back to the hotel cos it’s raining a bit, and her eyes are popping out of her head! It’s awesome to see because everything has become a bit normal to me.
