Getting Here

We left Cape Cod around 4 AM Tuesday morning and loaded three suitcases, six carryons, the Kiddo, and one cat into the van to head up to Logan airport in Boston (btw, we used Cape Destinations for airport limo service this time and on our trip to China for adopting the Kiddo, and they were consummate professionals both times; highest possible recommendation!).

Melody meowed for the entire trip to Logan, and we were worried that she might keep it up for the entire 24 hours or so of travel. Fortunately, as it turns out, airport limo vans bother her more than actual  airports or airplanes do. Once we got into the airport she mellowed out.

We hit a couple of minor snags early on. Air Canada wasn't sure what to make of our visa documents and it took a bit of discussion to convince them that they were okay. We then had an overweight bag (books!) and a scramble to redistribute the weight. We succeeded in that and finally got our boarding passes and headed to the gate. Fortunately, Air Canada has it's own separate set of gates at Logan, so it has its own security checkpoint, which had basically no line.

We arrived at the gate and discovered our flight to Toronto was delayed. See... No plane.

The plane dis eventually show up, and we left three hours behind schedule, which essentially ate our two-hour layover in Toronto, plus the time zone change. 

We arrived in Toronto (and got an awesome view of the city skyline on our approach), just in time to line up for boarding for our second leg: next stop, Tokyo Japan.

That flight was our longest at about 12 hours. The highlight was an amazing view of glaciers somewhere around Anchorage Alaska.

Melody had been in the cabin for the first two legs, but was getting transferred to cargo for the last leg, which was on ANA (Air Nippon). We were met at the gate in Tokyo by a whole group of ANA people who were there to take charge of the cat. They were pretty much the stereotype of Japanese courtesy, and werea generally awesome and patient while we assembled our hard carrier and transferred Melody to it. Melody was a trooper about the whole thing too.

Once Melody was checked, we had a few minutes to check out some of the shops at Tokyo Narita Airport, including this very Japanese establishment:

Last leg was five hours with all of us sitting together for the first time, but with Melody in the hold. We were together in the middle seats, but we were flying at night mostly over the Pacific Ocean, so there wouldn't have been much to see.

We touched down in Ho Chi Minh city, and progressed smoothly through immigration, customs, and baggage (Melody was fine), and were met by one of the administrators from my school, who was awesome (he even presented us with a couple of bottles of beer, figuring we needed a drink after all of that!).

We received the first part of our "settling-in allowance", $150 which amounts to three million Vietnamese dong. Who wants to be a millionaire? All three of us get to!

Melody was taken to the home of a co-worker who kindly agreed to look after her until we were set up in an apartment, and we were finally able to settle into our hotel for our first night in Ho Chi Minh City.

Here is the view out our hotel room window.

We took a moment to admire the view and then went to sleep. It was now after midnight on Thursday. Journey ended. Adventure just beginning.