The trip has officially started and I already have one bike ride completed. The logistics for the trip are wee complicated with 7 different flights, an overnight train ride, 5 different countries, 10 different hotels and a big launguage deficit. There is a lot that could go wrong. But, I am off to a good start.
I have a deeply held distrust of Air New Zealand and I do feel that it is a well founded skepticism. We and many others have suffered inconvenience, inflated costs, random cancelations, notoriously bad weather and generally really crappy service on the domestic routes. For all intents and purposes there is no competition for Air NZed and it shows. As such, if you have an international flight that is not on Air New Zealand, it is almost a requirement to go to the port of your exit from New Zealand the day before; the odds of cancelation are so high as to make this necessary.
So I left for Vietnam a day early and spent the night in Christchurch. I was so worried, I even booked a pretty early morning flight. Of course, it went off without a hitch and left on time. The first leg of travel for my bike was uneventful. Whew.
I got to the hotel way earlier than they could check me in, so I dropped off the bags and got some lunch at a dumpy looking but very good Thai restaurant. I headed back to the hotel wondering what to do with myself on this fine sunny day. As I was heading to the reception, I noticed they had a rack of bikes to use. I asked about it and they set me up to go out for a ride. Yeah! I cruised around Christchurch getting lost and trying to stay on the bike lanes. The bikes was not, shall we say, my beautiful Canyon Grizl, but beggars cannot be choosers. I was happy to get out in the sunshine and kill some time.
My flight to Hanoi was via Singapore with a 17 1/2 hour layover. The nice thing about it was that it was a day time flight, I could check my bike all the way through to Hanoi and get a nice overnight at the Crowne Plaza in the Singapore airport.
I woke up early, walked to a coffee shop and then headed back and packed up. My flight was at noon. I pulled a total Susanne and got to the airport over 3 hrs early. The check in wasn’t open yet, but amazingly there already about 10 people in line. I guess there are a lot of Susanne’s in the world 🙂
I had repacked the night before and now my bike box weighed 28 kgs. The nice thing about Singapore Airlines is they give you a 30 kg allowance. This lightened by carryon burden. The Christchurch airport is way ‘mo nicer than Auckland and if you have time to kill, you can even play a game of chess why you stand around waiting!
The wait was uneventful and the flight took off on time — 2 for 2. I like this trend.
I have learned to take advantage of my retired status to use time as my friend when flying long haul flights–only fly during the day, try to not have any overnights on the plane. The other is to pay the extra $100 to get the bulkhead seat with only two seats in the row and nobody in front of you. That’s what I did on the flight to Singapore and the 10 hours wasn’t too terrible.
I got a pretty good night sleep from about 7:30 pm to 4:00 am, but realized that was as far as my body was going to go. I packed up and figured I’d do another Susanne and head to the gate super early. It turned out to be a good idea as the automated immigration system was down and it was slow getting through immigration. By the time I cleared, the line was HUGE! That Susanne seems to be on to something … I should listen to her more.
The Singapore Airport is often rated as one of the best in the world. I will say it is pretty good, but really showing its age. Hardly any charging ports anywhere. I did get a proper iced americano which was nice. The Kiwis just don’t do iced coffee. If you order one, it comes out more like a milkshake. They have a thing against ice, I have noticed.
On the flight to Hanoi, I did my favorite thing while fly … watching big wave surf movies. There was some HBO special called “100 foot wave” that had 6 episodes of the crazy nut jobs that ride these monstrous things. It is truly terrifying.
I made it to Hanoi without a hitch. I thought immigration would be slow, but I buzzed right through. I was nervous whether my bike would make it and kept my eyes peeled for my Canyon box. I saw a Canyon box and then realized it was not my bike. Glad I didn’t walk off with that. It did finally come out and it looked like it had survived the trip.
I had ordered a car from the hotel and was looking for it in the usual mayhem of an Asia airport. Every taxi driver on the planet was excited to give me a ride, but was disappointed when I said “no.” After to teeth gnashing, I finally found the driver and we headed to the hotel.
The woman who checked me in was so nice and polite it almost made me uncomfortable. They are a very hospitable and nice group of people. I got to my room and unpacked the bike to make sure it still worked. It did! Yeah.
I was happy to have made it to Hanoi and was looking forward to exploring the amazing and crazy streets over the next couple of days.
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