Homeward Bound

Didn't sleep well because of the fear of sleeping in - silly really, when we had a call booked. The taxi came for us at 7.25 and made good time to the airport, so we got here by 8.15 for a 10.45 flight. Problem - the Dragonair computers were down, so we waited to drop our bags until almost 9am, when they finally started to check us in manually. We were first in line, it took 20 minutes to check the two of us in! Made us slightly anxious for an on-time departure, as we only had one and a half hours in Hong Kong to connect to our flight.

We took off only 15 minutes late and comfortably made our connection in Hong Kong. I took this same photo on the way out and used it for my OU course, but thought it would make a good blip for today.

5990 miles, two movies and lots of music, the flight home was almost 12 hours, with lunch - a second lunch as we had a light one on the first leg - and dinner and no sleep. I spent some time reviewing my 1200 photos! Don't exaggerate it is only 1175.

Back to F's house by 10pm, in bed by 11, shattered after almost 23 hours awake.

Back to Scotland on the train tomorrow, then back to real life. It has been an amazing trip, a real eye opener, lots of memories, luckily lots of photos, although I feel in general that I have still only taken lots of holiday snaps. My daughters gave me a gift voucher for a photo book for my birthday back in September so I think an 'essences of Vietnam' book may be on the cards.

Our favourite place was Hoi An
Our least favourite place was the awful aquarium on the island off Nha Trang
The most frustrating thing: all the millions of photo opps we missed while travelling
The most memorable: the people. Hard to pick out one thing, but the stark reminder of the American war at Son My and the War Remnants Museum keep returning to my mind. I loved the ancient Cham cultures but if I do any further reading after this trip it is likely to be to understand more about why that war happened and what - if anything - has been learned.