Yoga ~ Travel ~ Joy: Last flight outta 'Nam

Today we had to check out of Hoi An Chic Hotel at noon, but the hotel was kind enough to let us use showers and hang out in the lobby until we left for our flight. This was VERY helpful, as we weren't going to fly out until after 9pm. We asked if we could pay for a late checkout, but at 8am the people who were going to be in our room had ALREADY CHECKED IN!! We tried to get all our stuff packed and out of the room before 10am, when the shuttle would take us to town to pick up the last of our special orders, but we had bought too much stuff to fit in our two carryons. :)

After breakfast I wanted to take some nice pictures of the AMAZINGLY tailored stuff we bought while we still had access to the beautiful gardens of Hoi An Chic. Gavin didn't want to put on all his suits, so it ended up just being a Justine fashion show. :)

Royal blue peacoat.

Navy blue cocktail dress, a combo of this front from one catalogue picture...

...and the back from another dress. :)

Handmade shoes.

A summer dress - cool cotton on top, flowy silky material on the bottom. :)

From the back.

Tailor-made leather jacket. I can't even believe how well this fits!

I picked a contrasting red liner.

After our valient attempt to pack, we decided we needed to buy some luggage in town before we could finish. We took the shuttle to Old Town and first headed for the lantern store to pick up our lanterns, then found a shop that sold a large rolling duffel bag, which I will reuse as a snow skiing bag. Next we picked up Gavin's tailored leather jacket, then it was off to the first fitting for the dress I ordered yesterday afternoon.

First fitting it was way too big, they basted and marked the alterations. The sample dress I fell in love with on the mannequin is hanging over the bench in front of me.

I seriously don't know what I will wear this dress for, but I really love it! I'll wear it for the next formal event I get invited to (ha ha) or Gavin and I will dress up for dinner sometime, I guess. :)

After the dress fitting we rushed back to the hotel to finish packing and check out of the room at noon on the dot. We had lunch and hung out in the hotel restaurant for a couple hours, then headed back to Old Town on our scooters to do the final fitting of the formal dress, which was much more successful than the first try. We did some final wandering around Old Town, stopping for one last Vietnamese coffee (strong coffee with sweetened condensed milk!) for Gavin and a mango lassi for me. Then we returned the scooters and headed back to the hotel.

Last Vietnamese coffee for Gavin.

A note on driving the scooters for a couple days. Traffic patterns and driving habits in Vietnam are pretty much a free-for-all. People on scooters run red lights, pass whenever they feel like it, go the wrong way in the road, and park wherever there is space, including the sidewalk. After only one day, we started to absorb the driving manner of Vietnam. On our last day we ran two red lights, squeezed ourselves between two moving vans, parked on the sidewalk, passed whenever we wanted and used our horns liberally. :) We'll have to tone our driving back down when we get back to the US. :)

After more sitting in the hotel passing the time, we gratefully used their shower to freshen up, then headed to the airport to begin our 30+ hours of transit back to the US, starting with the short flight from Danang to Hanoi. We caught the last flight out of the country from Hanoi at 11:55pm, barely making it due to a comedy of errors. First, our original flight out of Danang was canceled and they put us on a later flight, then that flight was delayed by an hour and a half, giving us only 45 minutes between our arrival in Hanoi and our flight to Tokyo. We had been unable to check in at all for the Tokyo flight, online or at the Danang airport, so couldn't check our bags through. The lady at the Vietnam Airlines counter in Danang upgraded us to business class and put priority stickers on our checked bags to help speed us up. Once in Hanoi, we had to collect our checked bags (first ones out due to the priority sticker) and then as we were running through the airport desperately looking for the Japan airlines check in counter, a security guard told us we had to take a shuttle to the international terminal. This terminal was about a mile away, and we had to wait for the shuttle, pack our bags under the shuttle and head over at a snail's pace. Once at the international terminal we made a mad dash for the Japan Airlines counter, arriving less than a half hour before the flight was supposed to take off. The people working the counter took one look at us and all our bags and said that the flight was closed, we were too late. I protested that our flight from Danang had been delayed 3 hours, and those seemed to be the magic words. Suddenly all three of the people at the counter were willing to rush and work to get us on the flight, calling the gate, checking our bags and printing our passes. We then were sure we would make the flight, despite still having to go through immigration and security. I still really can't believe we made it, AND our bags made it with us back to the US!

I am sure we made quite the picture running through the airport with me pushing a trolly full of bags and Gavin carrying a huge bag of Chinese lanterns. :)

Thus ended our trip! We had an amazing time and hope to return next year!