What a long journey we had to take to get to Vietnam! We originally had our VA trip planned for Sri Lanka, to where we had already bought flights. But, due to unfortunate circumstances, Sri Lanka became an unsafe destination, and we chose to maneuver our volunteer experience to Ho Chi Minh City. This means that for four of us, we had to tack on two additional flights to get from Colombo to Saigon (HCM). Our fifth member Amalia booked through another airline and was able to switch her flights around for a minimal fee, allowing her to arrive in HCM a day before us.
For me, I left Washington, DC, where I was interning this summer, on Saturday morning. My first flight took me to Dubai, where I was able to meet up with Sangam, Celia, and Channing. Celia and Channing had a long layover in Dubai and took advantage of it by going to see the Dubai mall and Burj Khalifa. (I’m so jealous!)
The Burj Khalifa, which Channing and Celia went to see during their layover in Dubai.
We all then flew together from Dubai to Colombo, Sri Lanka, where we had to wait for our third connection in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While waiting in Colombo, we bonded by playing the card game “Exploding Kittens” and talking about our summers.
Due to some bad weather, our plane attempted and backed out on landing 3 times in Kuala Lumpur. While seeing beautiful lightning in the clouds around us, we descended instead to a nearby airport to wait out the rainstorm before we took off again to land in KL. This delay meant that we had to catch a later flight to Ho Chi Minh, and thus had a 6 hour layover in KL.
Given this long period of time, Channing got in touch with his parents, who moved to Kuala Lumpur 4 months ago, and asked them to pick us up. We then spent the rest of our layover grabbing lunch with Channing’s family and getting to see their apartment. Malaysia is an absolutely beautiful country; I would definitely come back here. The coolest part of our layover in KL was trying a bunch of asian fruits that Channing’s parents bought us at a fruit stand near their apartment! We all got to try durian, mangosteen, lychee, and fruits we know like pineapple and melon.
Trying various fruits in Malaysia.
Leaving Malaysia for our final flight to HCM. We missed Amalia, who was waiting for us in HCM during this time.
The final flight to HCM went great, despite being extremely tired. After finally touching down in Vietnam, we took a short Grab (their version of Uber) to our accommodation. The noisy, crowded, yet somehow organized and full-of-life streets of Ho Chi Minh City we drove through were a pleasant welcome to our next two weeks.
EGL Family Abroad 