Travel day(s) to Vietnam!

Hey! Writing from Da Nang, Vietnam! It’s been a wonderful past two weeks and I cannot wait to share what I have been learning here about the culture and how God is moving! But first, how did I get here again? And how long did it take? Let me give you a run down of some things our trip included

• 5 flights
• 4 different countries
• 3 nights sleeping in (and outside of) airports!
• 4 pre made PB&J consumed
• $11.33 spent
• and 78 total hours!

So, I bet you’re wondering the story behind this all, so I’ll start from the beginning. On November 23rd at 8pm, we started the trek down to the bus from our debrief location. This was 25 minutes of walking down a dark, muddy, dirt road with my 50 lbs big backs, 30 lbs day pack, fanny pack, my ukulele, and 4 pre-made PB&J sandwiches so I had meals for free instead of airport prices! What a start to the night. We arrived at the Medellín airport at around 9:30 and weren’t allowed past security, so we slept by the bag claim area overnight until about 5 am. After numerous mis communications with the airport staff, we finally started to get checked in at 7:50, which took about 1.5 hours for all of us to get through, barely leaving any time to get through security and to our gate. You would think that getting there 12 hours before the flight would guarantee no stress, but that indeed did not happen. But! We all made it onto our first flight to Houston!

^Medellín airport and after we hiked to get to our transfer bus from Guatapé (debrief location) to the airport!

After a 5 hour flight of watching the Minecraft movie and Top Gun, we arrived in Texas! We were very excited to be in the USA for a little bit! Everything was in English and there were American snacks (and prices…) and some family members came by to see their racer. I left the airport with my friend Kyah and got sushi and ice cream with her and her parents. After that 7ish hour layover, we were on flight #2 to LAX. I slept the whole way there, about a 2.5 hour flight. There, a girl on my squads parents greeted us with goodie bags, sign, and a lot of excitement at the gate! It was so sweet and so thoughtful of them to put together. Then we slept in the airport that night, again, outside of the check in. At 3:30 am, we checked our bags and got our visas checked. 3 racers visas did not work and they ended up stuck in LA for 3 more days. They had a great time though and got to stay somewhere for free and had free flights to Vietnam as well! We stayed in the airport that morning and didn’t leave until 11am. I got an overpriced Chai and ate my breakfast, PB&J. Yum!

^LAX

Then we started the 21 hour flight! I got a row with 2 seats in the 2nd to last row on the plane. To the right of me, there was empty space between me and the window, so I had put my bags there and had all the leg room in the world! it was truly the best seat on the plane and was perfect for this long flight. I sat by Blake, a fellow racer the entire trip. Seats are assigned by last name and I was very lucky to have someone I knew by me on every flight! Mainly slept on this trip, walked around for about an hour in the middle. Was actually not that bad (I have done a 27 hour bus ride before so I was used to the length). We had a 45 min layover in Hong Kong, which is country #3 in this trip! It was fun to see the airport. We had to go through customs to re-board the exact same plane. It was technically a fuel stop but everyone had to get off. It was a tight turnaround with the long lines but we all made it!

^some fun pictures throughout travel day- the first is Thomas at around hour 68 of travel. We all felt that.

After the 4th flight, we made it Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, which began the first round of goodbyes because our squad was splitting up. Lots of tears. We kept our bags outside of the airport in a median between 2 roads and some people slept. It was 1am Vietnam time but noon our time, so most people were not sleepy. My feet were insanely swollen which was funny! We found a McDonalds and a 7 Eleven. at 4 am, we stood in a HUGE line to check our bags in for our final flight with Vietjet airlines. It was CRAZY. People kept cutting in line, and the rules for this airlines are different than United. They made us weigh or carry ons, and mine being 15 pounds over the limit was a problem. So the workers had us rearrange bags so mine wasn’t as heavy, but then said the other bags were now to heavy and it was a whole fiasco. But in the end, they checked my carry on and forgot to make me pay so it was all okay. Went through security and had 3.5 hours left until we boarded because the flight was delayed. But a short flight later (#5), we finally made it to Da Nang!

^these are some of my closest friends on the race and none of them are on my team, which made goodbyes pretty hard.

The boys team is also staying in Da Nang, so we said goodbye to them, met our hosts, and drove to our apartment!

So in total, It was 78 long hours of travel! Crazy and record breaking (I think) for the race. I was given a $40 meal budget and only spent $11.33 of it thanks to my handy dandy PB&Js, which did in fact become less and less appetizing every time I ate it… but it was worth it! My team had pretty bad jet lag the next couple of days, and my feet took a while to swell back down. But we are here and settled, and LOVING it!

Thanks for following along this crazy journey!

Ellie