Day One

My flight to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) left from Los Angeles Tuesday morning at 1:30am. I arrived at LAX with my brother & sister-in-law about four hours early. Good thing. My luggage turned out to be way too heavy because I had packed several books to take with me, thinking that I'd have a hard time finding interesting reading material in English in Vietnam. We shuffled & scuffled to rearrange my luggage, to redistribute the weight, but I still wound up leaving a tall stack of precious books in LA. Where is that Kindle now?

I flew EVA Air in Elite Class. I *highly* recommend it. It was like traveling in an EZ chair in my living room. No cramps, no grumpy face.

I had 14 hours before we reached Taipei, where I would connect to my flight to Ho Chi Minh City. I stayed awake for as long as I could in hopes of getting my body on Vietnam time, then slept like a baby for several hours.

We arrived in Taipei at 6:30am local time. I ate noodles for breakfast & perused the Hello Kitty store while eavesdropping on various conversations in Mandarin. I did pretty well understanding the numbers, & caught a few other phrases here & there as well. At 9:30am I boarded another plane for the three-hour flight to Vietnam.

I got through customs with no problems, & found my luggage intact. Michael & Thom from KTV, the school where I'll be teaching, were right outside to pick me up. They took me to an Indian restaurant in HCMC for lunch. Nom nom nom. Then we headed out to Bien Hoa: 16 miles, 1 hour. Traffic here is super slow because of all the scooters on the road. Beep beep.

Michael & Thom dropped me off at my hotel, leaving me to settle in & rest up from my 24-hour trip. I couldn't help but take an eentsy weentsy little nap. At around 9:00pm my hosts came to the hotel to take me for dinner & beers. The beer came with ice. So far no harm.

Tomorrow is a big day. Michael is going to take me around town to change money, get a local pre-paid cell phone, & generally get oriented. Then I start teaching tomorrow evening. I hope I can get some sleep tonight so that I'm awake for my first class.