Samantha in Saigon: January 2014

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I woke up suddenly in a still-semi-drunk fog. What’s that sound? Is that my head pounding? Where am I? Oh, look, I remembered to change into my pajamas last night. Good for me.

Bang! Bang! “Samantha! Wake up!”

Ok, not just my head pounding. I stumbled over to the door to see what sort of fire Sarah had set in her room. Surely there was no other reason for her to be waking me up so rudely in the middle of the night.

“Huh?” I mumbled through half-closed eyes as I cracked open the bedroom door.

“We’re late! We have to leave NOW!”

“What? No. What time is it?” I run to my phone and look at the clock. “5:07?!?! Oh my god! What happened? Hurry!!!”

We both screamed up the stairs to wake up Nick, and as I slammed the door and rushed to the bathroom to brush my teeth, the previous night’s events began to become clear in my mind.

I hadn’t planned to get drunk. It was an accident, really. The evening had started innocently enough, eating dinner with friends and drinking a few beers. But then we grabbed a couple more beers to enjoy on the cab ride over to Cargo, and things went downhill from there. We went to see The Cribs play a show, and since I had never heard of them, I didn’t mind hanging out a little bit too close to the bar and mingling with the seemingly hundreds of people I knew at the venue. And somehow (who ever really knows how these things happen?) I drank maybe one too many and then lost track of how many too many I was drinking.

Luckily, I had packed my bag the night before. I threw on my clothes and thought to myself, “This is ridiculous. We’re never going to make it. It’s twelve after five already and our flight LEAVES at 6:05!”

I could hear Sarah running around in a frantic dash and wondered if Nick had even moved from the bed.

“NICK!!! ARE YOU AWAKE??” I screamed out the door, only considering poor Dave sleeping across the hall after it was too late. Sorry, Dave.

Well, whatever. Either Nick’s ready in five minutes or he isn’t. Must find camera battery. Must pack deodorant. Must drink coffee. Must stop drinking beer.

5:18. I ran downstairs, double-checking that I had my passport. Shoes, shoes, where are my shoes? Sarah flew into the living room, bag packed, the shock of the morning having wiped any sign of a hangover from her eyes.

“Where’s Nick? Is he coming? I’ll go flag down a cab. Hurry!!” Sarah ran off, leaving me to yell for Nick yet again.

After a few minutes of pacing by the front gate, a couple more shouting matches up and down the stairs (sorry, Dave!!), and one more passport check, Nick and I went dashing through the alley to catch up with Sarah. Thankfully, she had a cab waiting for us on the main road.

The cabbie must have sensed the panic in our voices as we frantically encouraged him to get us to the airport terminal ASAP. At lightning speed through the deserted early-morning streets, the taxi driver catapulted us across town in what MUST have been record time. A mere 11 minutes from our house to the airport? Unheard of!

5:40. We tumbled out of the cab and scrambled through the growing crowds of people towards the check-in counter. There was no line, of course, because all the sensible people had long-since checked in for the flight. Most of them were probably already seated, carry-on luggage stowed safely in the overhead compartment, waiting patiently for the taxi to the runway.

“Can we still check in for Buon Ma Thuot? Please!!” I begged, thrusting our passports across the counter. “We’re not checking any bags! We can run!”

The woman glanced at our passports and picked up her walkie talkie. I have no idea what she said, but it was probably along the lines of, “Hey, I have three idiots down here at the counter, reeking of stale cigarettes, alcohol sweats, and desperation, asking to board the flight to Buon Ma Thuot.”

It was now after 5:45am; the flight was scheduled to leave at 6:05. But because this is Vietnam, the land of miracles, we were allowed to check in for the flight. Home free!

Or not.

Upstairs in the hall, there were ten impossibly long lines waiting to go through security. Where are all these people going?? It’s not even 6am! We chose a short-ish looking line and held our breath. It’s fine.... we’re checked in. Right??

As we watched the security lines on either side of move faster than ours, we exchanged worried glances, but didn’t dare utter any reality-based phrases about not making the flight. Positive thoughts only.

5:58. I made it through security was recombobulating my bags. Oh man, only seven minutes till the flight leaves. Will they let us board the plane?

6:00. We approached the boarding gate, and the agents must have be warned about us by the walkie talkie lady down at the ticket counter. They chuckled a bit and scanned our boarding passes.

As we walked down the stairs towards the boarding area, we all finally exhaled and celebrated our success. Hungover and with less than an hour between wake-up and take off, we made it.

And it’s a good thing we did. The strange adventures did not end at the boarding gate. By the end of the weekend, we had exited a taxi at a gas station in a random small town, walked aimlessly through said small town while being greeted by every citizen, mimed with locals to find out how to catch a bus, saw a family purchase a plastic bag full of live baby ducks, chatted with a local man outside his barber shop while waiting for a bus, sang My Heart Will Go On with a couple Vietnamese teenagers in the backseat of a bus, canoed around a lake, rode an elephant, drank too much coffee, been driven around rural villages on motorbikes without helmets, accidentally ate snake, been asked to be Facebook friends with some dude at a street food restaurant, and argued over the rules of strange card games.

Apparently, you can stay out too late, be over served, forget to set an alarm, and STILL have all your travel dreams come true!