Home to Ho Chi Min

Our departure from Newcastle airport was fairly painless, although, to his great delight, Josh was selected for the explosives security screening. The waiting area was full of the Melbourne Storm youth team in matching purple jackets. Flynn and Campbell wanted to know why the flight attendant said "roosters" to everyone as she checked their boarding passes and let us out on the tarmac. Flynn thought that perhaps she didn't like the Storm and was having a go. After I explained that she was saying "Rear Stairs" we had a bit of a giggle. During the safety briefing, Flynn was keen to watch but was in a middle seat and could not see. Josh, who was on the aisle, mimed the whole thing for Flynn. It was pretty funny and we all had the giggles again.

We had booked a night at the Parkroyal, across the road from the airport, so in no time at all we had our bags dropped in the room and were off into the city for dinner with my friend Chis. He met us at the edge of Chinatown, which was jam packed full of Saturday night diners. We waded in and headed toward our destination, Supper Club, which had hopeful patrons lining up the stairs and out into the lane. We had a booking, so waltzed up and in to a dodgy venue with good Chinese. Other than some chopstick battles, the boys were great and shovelled their way through the mountain of food we ordered. Chris gave the boys $50 to buy something dodgy in Vietnam. 

We snoozed or way through the taxi ride back to the hotel and settled in for the night.

Breakfast on Sunday morning was enlivened by the "cool machines" - an automatic pancake maker, a toaster conveyer belt and a juicer. I think we spent an hour at the breakfast buffet before walking across to the airport. 

Many hours later we landed in Ho Chi Min city. It is very humid here, with that faint rotting smell that comes from the heat and the wet. Our transfer escorts were waiting as we came through passport control and did ALL the bag collection, loading and offloading through the scanners and loading into the van. Our driver was a soccer fan and named his way through all the notable Aussie players, checking if we had seen any of them play. The drive to our hotel was an experience. I have read about it, but the scooter / car interaction madness has to be seen to be believed. There were a few scooters with whole families on them and one with a small baby between the parents being bottle fed as they scooted along. There are a surprising amount of neon lights - we are on the 14th floor of a tower and from there the city looks like any other. 

Our hotel is gorgeous, with a full range of service options. Should we desire there is complementary unpacking, re packing, ironing and shopping. We took advantage of the free dinner in the club lounge, with sate sticks cooked to order and many cute tiny desserts. 

As usual when we travel, the boys have been amazingly cheerful - the only one a little bit tired and cranky is me. Shower and bed is next on the agenda.