Not Your Typical Travel– WEEK?!

Travel on the World Race looks a lot different than what you’d think it does.  It’s not just one flight, an Uber and you’re there.  After experiencing the flights, the buses, and the many hours that turned into days before arriving in Thái Nguyên (which is in northern Vietnam), I figured I would compile all the details into a blog post so that all of you back home could get a small taste of the eventful week it took to get here.  Trust me when I say it is not for the faint of heart.  Much of our travel days involve trying to sleep where we can, eat where we can, do what we can when we can (especially in new places), and just get from point A to point B with all of our luggage and people intact.  Exhausted, but intact.  That’s travel for us.  This is long, but comprehensive.  If you have any questions about travel for me after reading this, I would love to try to answer them!  Please direct message me on Facebook or Instagram and I’ll do my best to answer or get an answer for you!

January 5th.

We said many goodbyes in the days leading up to our last day in El Salvador.  Our hosts, the Alvarez family, were good to us and we will always have family in the city of San Salvador.  They drove us to the airport that morning and Mireya kept the goodbye short and a bit bittersweet, hopping back into the driver seat quickly after hugging all of us.  We soon were greeted in the airport by other teams that were waiting and then greeted more teams as they arrived.  It was so good to be back in the company of so many of our squad-mates and close friends.  We checked our bags, which is always a feat when there are roughly 40 people in one huge group stampeding the check-in station (GOD BLESS OUR LOGISTICS TEAM), then made our way through security only to wait for another hour or two to actually board our flight.  The flight from El Salvador to Orlando, Florida lasted only three hours, giving us an arrival time of 10:15pm.  Disembarking the plane, passing through customs and finding our bags at the baggage claim was another hour and a half, but it was so worth it to get to the big event of the evening.

I had contacted a family-friend of mine before leaving El Salvador because many people were getting to see friends and family while we were back (however briefly) in the States.  This friend set up an INCREDIBLE suite in the Orlando airport hotel for me and several of my squad-mates to rest up, eat, and shower in (I didn’t realize how much I’d missed hot showers).  She even prayed over all of us before she left!  We also had one of our leaders from training camp pop in to see all of us at the hotel!!  It was amazing and a very special blessing to all of us.

January 6th.

We stayed in the suite until about 4am the next morning when we left to check into our next flight.  At this point in our travels, our squad split up into two groups.  Group 1 took a flight to New York, followed by a flight to South Korea, then one more flight to meet up with Group 2 in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.  My group (#2) checked in to our flight to Chicago, Illinois and took off at 7am.  This 3-hour flight had us arriving at 9am (went back a time zone) and we waited in Chicago for our 10:40am flight to Tokyo…. Japan.  Yeah, that one took a while.

January 7th.

A whopping 13.5 hours later, we arrived in Tokyo at 3pm.  Luckily, for all of the flights and especially the long one, I was seated next to some of my closest friends on the squad (perks of making friends with the people whose last names start with the same letter).  We watched movies, slept, ate GREAT airplane food, listened to music, talked, and just tried to kill time during the longest flight of our lives.  We figured out that we had basically completely missed the day of the 7th with the massive time zone jump, but we made the most of it.  Our time in Japan, however, was very short.  Three hours and a nap later, we were on the 5:50pm, 6.5 hour flight to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.  Surprisingly enough, getting our visas and making it through customs was easier, I think, than we all expected it to be, even if it took until midnight.  My team and I grabbed our bags at the baggage claim, said “See you at Debrief in Cambodia!” to three of the teams, “See ya tomorrow!” to the other three, found a guy with a couple taxis, and made our way to check in to our hostel by 1:30am.

January 8th. 

The K2 Hostel was one of those pod hotels, where 10 people stay in a tiny room but it comprised of stacked pods for each person (spaces about the size of the twin-sized beds in them for us to sleep in).  Look them up!  They’re pretty cool!  In the morning, I was woken up by Meagan at 9:30am, and Meagan, Summer and I went to this place called Legend Café where I had sweetened Vietnamese iced coffee with something they called a dry noodle dish.  Our team had the day to explore the city and, while EmJay and Hannah went to the Vietnam War museum, the three of us walked all over the city and just enjoyed Ho Chi Minh for the day!  We went to the Bitexco Financial Tower where we took the elevator to the sky-view floor (somewhere around 45 floors above the city) and took a TON of pictures.  We got our first bowls of Vietnamese Pho, which was already my favorite food but it just got better when it was the real thing!  Our time in Ho Chi Minh came to a close too fast and we got back to our hostel, packed up, and left in a taxi to catch a sleeper bus to Da Nang.  We almost missed our bus because of some miscommunication with our taxi driver, but we made it just in time to meet up with two other teams and started our (what turned out to be) nearly 24-hour bus ride to Da Nang, Vietnam.

January 9th.

Sleeper buses are an experience in and of themselves.  Picture this.  Three rows of very narrow bunk beds running length-wise from the front to the back of a bus.  The undercarriage is so full of our packs (and sleeper buses second as postage vehicles so it is also filled with packages that are being transported to other cities and the occasional live chicken in a box) that the aisles inside the bus are also being taken up by luggage and packages.  One big group of 12 girls from America.  None of us speak Vietnamese.  And no bathroom.  That’s the sleeper bus.  Enough said.  It was a long 24-hour ride.  We arrived in Da Nang at 4:30pm, loaded up into taxis, and drove to our next hostel.  Toto Hostel is one I’d highly recommend to anyone in the future and one I would definitely return to.  We honestly had such a lovely stay there that night.  We unloaded and then went out to find dinner pretty quick because most of us had snacked for the last 24 hours instead of eating actual meals.  Somehow, we found a small diner that served a lot of American foods.  During our meal, we found out that the owners and employees were all Christians!  The manager told us all about how they hire deaf people to work in the kitchen and hire people that need to learn English and teach them so they can get better jobs.  The World Race has also worked with them for the last six years or so!  Teams have worked in the café and taught the English classes!  This was absolutely a divine appointment.  The manager even gave us some recommendations for our meals the next day so we could experience Da Nang a bit more before leaving.  Meagan and I explored the area a bit after dinner before heading back to the hostel, showering, and crashing into bed.

January 10th.

The next morning, Meagan and I took the suggestion of the Happy Heart Café manager and went to breakfast at a place called My Quang Que (the name of the food we ate is the restaurant’s name, too).  We tried a plain black version of Vietnamese coffee there and it was so strong that Meagan thought it had alcohol in it!  Soon after, we left for our next sleeper bus, only to find that our bus didn’t leave until much later in the day (4pm instead of 1:40pm).  We found a place for lunch and hung out until our bus arrived to take our two teams to the capitol city of Ha Noí (we said goodbye to one team as they took an earlier bus heading to a different part of Vietnam).

January 11th.

17 hours later, we finally arrived in Ha Noí!  The second bus ride definitely wasn’t as bad as the first, but we were so happy to be done with that part of our travel.  Splitting off one final time and hugging the other team goodbye, our team caught two taxis and drove the remaining hour and a half to Thái Nguyên!  This month we are staying in an AirBnB homestay here (Nam My Van Homestay; again, highly recommend) which is owned by a very kind family with whom we immediately hit it off with!

And that’s how we got to Vietnam!  Thank you for reading my post!  I hope you enjoyed it and maybe it was a bit informative into the life of a Racer when it comes to travel days (even if this wasn’t our norm)!  Again, if you have questions about travel or the Race or just want to talk, please contact me.  Seriously, just shoot me a message and we can set up a time to do a video call or something.  I would honestly love to hear from you guys back home (especially if my blog has had any impact on you or has peaked your interest)!

Love y’all!

(p.s.  Don’t forget that the final fundraising deadline is fast approaching on the 31^st of January.  Please prayerfully consider donating!  Thanks for helping me get fully funded!)