So we got up and had our four-course breakfast in preparation for the long journey back to the UK. We packed up our room slowly and checked out as late as possible, as we would have a three-hour wait in the lobby for our transfer to Ho Chi Minh City airport. Interestingly, the three-letter airport code is still SGN (Saigon), as that was set up before the name was changed after the war.
The checkout bill was less than we estimated, probably because we still cannot get over the dong conversion rates (34,000 is £1). It was in the millions, but…
While in the lobby we could still help ourselves to snacks, and it was pretty comfortable. Our taxi driver arrived 10 minutes early and we set off for the three-hour drive up to the airport. We were not going to bother blogging this part as it is a bit dull, but we got some lovely pictures on the way back so we thought we would do a short blog. The sun was setting as we drove through Ho Chi Minh City and there were a staggering number of kites up in the air.
We had about six hours at the airport, which was a bit of a drag as the plane was delayed a little. Probably because it has to take a slightly longer route to avoid the Middle East war zone. We had our final pho and then went through baggage drop and security (about 90 minutes 🥱). We then went and blew all of our dong on beer and whisky… we got it down to 1,000 dong left… about 3p! Even the waitress was impressed.
We had an aisle and a centre seat, and Sue was quite pleased when her travel companion in the window seat was a tiny Vietnamese lady who (annoyingly) slept the whole way back!
