Hello to Hanoi

Today we said goodbye to New Zealand and hopped on a plane to Hanoi. We left our hostel at 8:30am and got a shuttle to the airport. We flew first from Dunedin to Auckland. This was only a short flight, less than 2 hours, landing around 11:45am. Our next flight, to Taipei, wasn't until 20:45. We had a long time to kill, and we only got 30 minutes free WiFi. We did a tiny bit of planning of the Vietnam and Cambodia legs of the trip, but it's quite hard without WiFi to look stuff up.

Eventually at 17:45 the check in opened and we went to check in. When we got to the desk the woman asked for the credit card I'd booked the flight on. I had no idea where that particular card was and I had to unpack my whole rucksack, and even then I couldn't find it. We rejoined the queue and ended up a different counter and this lady said it was fine I could give them a different card. Eventually we were checked in after many questions about Vietnam visas and flights out of Vietnam, or countries further on, which we didn't have, and we dropped our bags off and went and had some food.

We were delighted to discover when we boarded the plane and located our seats that Lauren and I were in a row of two next to the window. It was a huge plane and had TV screens in the back of the seats. We had also discovered on check in that the plane was actually stopping in Brisbane, before we go to Taipei to get our plane to Hanoi. So we flew for around 3 hours to Brisbane and then waited around an hour and a half to get back on the same plane in the same seats. On the flight to Brisbane we experienced some turbulence that literally made my stomach drop, like that feeling you get on a rollercoaster. It was quite scary! But I finally managed to get to watch 'The Girl On The Train' which I'd wanted to see for ages.

The flight from Brisbane to Taipei was the longest leg of the journey. It was between 8-9 hours. It's hard to tell with the time difference exactly how long it was and I'm not sure what time we actually left Brisbane. I tried to sleep as much as I could, and did manage to get some but not much at all. Planes are really not that comfy. Lauren seemed to be asleep for most of it. She seems has the ability to fall asleep anywhere. I watched the film "The Fault In Our Stars' and ended up crying because it's so sad.

We landed at 6am local time in Taipei and had to wait an around 2 hours for the next flight to Hanoi. In the airport we saw two guys who had been on the Kiwi Experience with us, which was really strange. We then took off on the last leg of the journey at 8:25. Throughout the 3 flights with China Airlines we have been given so much food we won't need to eat again for a week. I even turned down one meal as I just didn't need it. But the food has been pretty nice. We've had stir fried pork and rice and chicken and rice, as well as some other chicken thing. They've all been like dinner though which is strange when it's morning.

We've made it to Hanoi. It's 10:35am and it's raining.