Is *fart bucket.

A little update for all y’all *fart buckets out there,  and yes I will explain that.

You know what they say about the best laid plans? No really, do you? I don’t, but I assume that it means I can toss out my detailed itinerary that I worked so hard one, this one damn time?!

Yesterday/days? went fairly smoothly, little hiccups are always expected, and we left time for them. Thank dog for that. We needed it. Got to Vancouver YVR Airport for 10pm, picked up our boarding passes, went inside and bought some sandwiches for our flight. 

First flight was great, Xiamen airlines gets a big 4 stars from me. Well, for this long haul flight. The flight was 13 hours, I somehow did the math wrong and thought it was only 9, so 13 was a bit of a shock. The airbus was pretty, food was good, flight attendants were nice, and they wake you up from sleep time with rainbow lights in the cabin. And seeing as I am a unicorn, I needed a rainbow light wake up, I just hadn’t realized it..

  

We arrived in Xiamen on time, and had a 6 hour layover. We decided to taste China’s smog, it was surprisingly refreshing. 
We hung around outside to watch the sunrise. I realized I was watching the sun rise in the land of the rising sun. And yes, I sang it, and yes it was stuck in my head for like an hour, and yes it’s probably stuck in yours now.. sorry not sorry.

Our flight from Xiamen, the second leg, left 2 hours late. We were worried about timing on the other end, and getting our bags, doing customs, checking in, and making a flight we had left a 4 hour gap for, they we now had probably less than 2. 

Upon arrival at Bangkoks airport, there was a lady dressed head to toe in purple, holding a sign with my name… she said she was going to rush us through the process. We hopped on her incredibly quick purple airport buggy, and zoomed past our friends fro the last two flights. 

We had a minor hiccup, needing to print another form for our Vietnam visa, but we got it don’t and she rushed us to our gate. We thought, “okay, that was the inevitable hiccup for today, and we made it through with only minor panic.” 

Then we arrived in Vietnam. 🇻🇳 

We took our pre printed and approved visa papers to the customs line. They told us we had to stand in the devestatingly long visa application line, which we did, then we had to wait an hour for them to call us up to retrieve our visa and passports. 

We were having our hotel shuttle pick us up, and bring us to the hotel, but now we were 2+ hours late arriving.. we looked around despairingly for a few minutes, and a dude with my name on a sign walked by. Thank fuck he was still there.

After some pro driving skills and complete disregard for laws, he got us to Legacy Hotel, in Hanoi. We were told there wasn’t any room left. Yet we had already paid and booked over a month ago. 

We were not amused.

After some tense negotiations, we got our money back, and made them put us up in another hotel close by, for free. It’s a dump, but hey, it’s free. 

Just woke up, heading to our bus that will take us to Ha Long Bay today. ☺️ we have arrive!
*fart bucket – a mistranslation by Google Translate that is my new favourite term of endearment for anyone and everyone. (Can also be used angrily, with bile.)