The Traveling Steve's

Just a short post to say we made it safely home from our Vietnam and Cambodia trip with no issues or delays.  It’s 9:50pm Thursday night as I write this, munching on a pizza as we are too tired to go out for dinner.  I’m so mixed up on the time, but we left Ho Cho Minh City (Saigon) at 11:05pm Wednesday night (which would be 11:05am Wednesday morning at home).

We had an overnight 5 hour flight on a Korean Airlines 747 jumbo jet, and sat on the upper deck in Business Class.  As it was not full, I moved over to a window seat behind DOS, as we were planning on sleeping most of the flight. The first flight went by fast, and it was soon early morning, 5:30am or so in Seoul when we arrived there, semi-zombied out.  Seoul had a two hour time change, which threw us off a bit from the 12 hour time change we had been used to for the trip.  Even though we didn’t leave the airport in Seoul, we noticed it was noticeably colder there as we got off the plane, reminding us that it was still Winter; quite a change from the hot and tropical weather we had for most of the trip.

While in ICN Airport, we relaxed for a while in the Korean Airlines Prestige Lounge, having a bit of coffee, and light breakfast food there.  Our long flight was at 9am, Korean Airlines flight #35 from Seoul to Atlanta on an Airbus 380 jumbo jet.  We were also on the top deck for this flight, and again it was not full, so I sat in window seat 14G while DOS moved over and sat behind me in 15G, giving us two business class seats a piece as the adjacent seats were empty.  We were both pretty tired when we boarded from the overnight flight to Seoul, so we didn’t take many photos this time.  The window seats are nice as they offer not only a great view from the large windows (although the shades were closed most of the flight), and they have two compartments next to the window for storing things during the flight, which makes it convenient not having to get up to the overhead to get an iPad, laptop etc, as well as makes for an inflight table of sorts for holding blankets, papers, misc etc.

The 380 is a remarkable plane, and I wrote about it on the flight outbound from Atlanta to Seoul which you can read here:

The 14 hour scheduled flight actually only took 12 1/2 hours going back, yet it seemed longer no doubt to us being tired out from the trip and the overnight flight to Seoul.  I watched a movie on the flight, and kept track of our progress via the TV monitors showing the flight status.  When we got to about the 4 hour remaining mark, it felt like the flight should be over, but we were just crossing over the west coast of the United States.  We had our second meal (dinner) around this point, and then I tried napping for the remainder of the trip.

We had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Atlanta which went by really fast, by the time we cleared Customs and Security, and had a quick 10:30am lunch at Chick Filet.  Out final flight segment of the trip was on a Delta Airlines 737 from Atlanta to Orlando that departed at 11:55am, over 24 hours since we departed our trip from Ho Cho Minh City.  The quick hour long flight to Orlando had us retrieving our luggage from baggage claim at 1:15pm, and we took a large taxi van home.  We chatted with the driver, and he seemed genuinely interested in hearing our taxi and scooter stories from our AMA Waterways trip, as we commented how different it felt being back home without the multitude of scooters, Tuk-Tuks, crossing the street in Hanoi etc.

We brought our luggage into the house, (including the two extra suitcases we had to buy on our trip to carry our purchases home!) and fortunately a quick look seemed that everything was intact from the long journey – yes even our ‘Wok’ hats made it home ok!

The first order of business was a long, hot shower, followed by a ‘nap’ which turned into a two hour deep snooze.  Now I’m looking at a huge stack of mail, several unpacked suitcases, lots of laundry, and it can all wait until tomorrow!  For now, it’s good to be back, and off to bed.  What a fantastic trip – Welcome Home!