8:30 – Wake up
9:00 – Breakfast
9:30 – Depart to the airport
Nothing new to start off, though this will set my personal record for the longest time spent in transit. Roughly 24 hours from departure until we can toss our luggage to the side in a hotel on the other side of the world. Starting with a 15 hour flight to Seoul, South Korea, followed by a 3 hour layover until the final 5 hour flight into Hanoi, Vietnam. This semi-idealistic plan was unfortunately cut short by a 4 hour delay in our initial flight due to navigation system issues. After being provided a $15 meal voucher (which almost covered my sandwich) and a 4 hour wait, we finally get to reboard the plane.
One thing that makes a 15 hour flight after a 4 hour delay a bit less fun, is knowing you can no longer catch your connection flight that you had a 3 hour layover for. After discussing with Air Canada, we were given a somewhat vague response of “We’ll rebook you once the plan takes off so we know what time it lands”. The logic checks out, but did nothing to ease the concern of not knowing how much time we’d miss in Hanoi.
Airplane takes off, I start cycling through various methods of killing time, from downloaded videos and music, to games and a little studying. Not much to write about waiting for time to pass, though my dad does get the in-flight wi-fi to check what our next flight was, and we discovered it changed from a 3 hour layover to 15.
We touch down in Seoul, South Korea, and wait for another little bit to get our new boarding passes and figure out where we’ll be spending the night. Air Canada provided a hotel for the night, which we navigated through the airport to find the shuttle bus for. 15 minutes later we were checking into a very nice hotel called Nest Hotel, which as far as hotels you were last second booked into, definitely surpassed expectations. After checking in, we were given the key card and a large dinner tray with a variety of foods, which we brought up to the cozy (and very accomodating) room.
A spacious bathroom, toiletries, a cute study desk, comfortable beds, and a balcony overlooking the sky of a country I wasn’t planning to check off my travel list for a little bit. You could argue that spending one night in a country because of a flight delay doesn’t count as visiting the country, but the stamp in my passport and the Korean hotel slippers I took beg to differ. Without much time to spend before going to bed, we eat our dinner trays and unwind for an hour before going to sleep to catch the 6:45am shuttle bus back to the airport.
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