The 29th April had finally arrived and checking out of Hotel Marlin in Cartagena we began the long journey to Vietnam. Packed up with some sandwiches, crisps and biscuits we was all set and made the short 15 minute taxi ride to the airport. Four flights via Panama, Los Angeles and Taipei we would eventually be landing in Vietnam two days later on the 1st May, crossing the date line.
The first flight to Panama was only an hour long and went very quickly. As the plane flew over we saw Panama city spread out beneath us and a bay full of boats. It looked like a great place to visit. A mad dash through the airport and an hour after we had landed we were once again sat on our second plane towards LA. A 7 hour flight full of inflight entertainment made the journey go reasonably fast. 3 films and a pasta lunch followed by a chicken burger snack we was fairly impressed with Copa Airlines. On descent into LA, a local fellow pointed out Orange county and downtown LA as we flew over. Arriving in LA we had to sit for an additional 45 minutes on the plane as they wouldn't let us off due to the border control being too full. Finally we were let off to be met with an hour long queue! Eventually we got our passports stamped and headed forth into the security queue. As we had sandwiches, crisps and biscuits to declare we went through a separate scanner and luckily for us we was allowed to keep our food as it contained no meat or fresh fruit or veg. The border police were abit astounded however at our cheese and pickled onion sandwich combination! Strange Americans who clearly don't know what's good for them! What was meant to have been our longest transfer time of 7 hours was therefore cut down to 4, due to the time it took to get through customs and security. Arriving at the gate after checking in and then more queues and scanners, we was all set too explore what we thought would be a great airport. We expected lots of designer shops, Hollywood gift shops and cool bars and restaurants... How wrong could we be! There was one duty free shop and one cafe bar; probably the worst airport lounge I have ever been too! We settled down at the bar for a $7 bottle of beer and an $8 glass of wine! After drinking very slowly and feeling like we had definitely been ripped off we headed to the gate to devour our packed lunch before boarding!
The flight to Taipei was our longest yet; 13.5 hours and by the time we had finally boarded at 11:30pm we was very tired from travelling the whole day already. The journey consisted of more inflight entertainment, a dinner of chicken or pork, a short nap, turbulence, more inflight entertainment, turbulence, breakfast of eggs and a hash brown, turbulence and more inflight entertainment. Due to the amount of turbulence I found it very difficult to sleep! This time Jonathan slept for about 8 hours and I only managed 4. Five films later we finally began the descent to Taipei. It was strange as we had also gone forward in time by 15 hours so we felt very disorientated with the time and date etc!
Arriving in a very wet China we settled down for our last four hour wait. At 6am the shops opened and it was a great airport! After drooling over the Thomas Sabo Jewellery collection and looking at the many Chinese gadget shops we was finally able to board our last 2 hour plane journey to Hanoi. Arriving in Hanoi we went amazingly fast through the border control and was relieved to find our rucksacks had also made our very long journey. Four flights and around 23 hours of flying this is probably our longest and most tiring journey we have ever done (even beating our Bali journey!). Arriving at our hostel we were welcomed with big smiles and shown to our very comfy room. Now we are in Asia the hostels are a third of the price and twice as luxurious! Now to solve the jet lag problem. Hayls and Jonathan x