Vietnam, Part 1: Getting There

Alright, so a couple of days turned into a week. I'm finally ready to start blogging out our Vietnamese adventure.

We left Columbus on 12/10. My mom and Greg came down the night before so that they could drive us to the airport. Around 8 am we boarded a small jet for our 1 hour flight to Newark. When we landed we had to wait on the ramp until an "agent" brought the little portable walkway over to the plane. This caused us to nearly miss our flight to Tokyo. We ran to our gate and they were boarding the last people as we got there! We were lugging our carry-ons (our only luggage for the trip) down the aisle to our seat and a flight attendant looks at me and says "We don't have room for that, you're going to have to check it." The color drained from my face and I turned to Ryan with a desperate look. The attendant was busy helping someone else and I pushed past her to our section. There was another attendant back there and he helped to find a spot for my bag. Ryan went to the other side of the plane and rearranged a few tings in an overhead compartment and made his fit. Phew!

Thank goodness for the in-flight entertainment. The TV shows, games and movies helped to distract us from a crying baby up front. I watched Bride Wars and cried like a baby at the end, much to Ryan's embarrassment, and probably to the discomfort of the guy on the other side of me. Ryan watched Inception among others. We got up every so often to move around to prevent blood clots. I even did a few salsa steps in the bathroom to get the blood flowing.

16 LONG hours later we land in Tokyo. We exchange some dollars for Yen and get a bowl of soba noodles to split and a bottle of water. We are feeling pretty rough at this point and we still have a 6 hour flight to Hanoi ahead of us.

We board out Japan Air flight and Ryan immediately falls asleep. I sleep a little, but wake up when they bring the food around. Ryan had mentioned something about wanting to eat even if he was sleeping. I poked him on the arm. Nothing. I pushed his arm off the armrest. Nothing. After lifting his head and nudging his whole body a couple times with no success, I took his pulse to make sure he was still with us. He was. After borderline-violent shaking he woke up enough to order the beef stroganoff. The meal was basically a bowl of brown gravy with nothing in it, but what did we expect ordering stroganoff on a Japan Air flight? After such a long time sitting, my rear was in some serious pain, and so was Ryan's knee. Hours later we landed in the Hanoi International Airport.

To be continued...