Thinking back to my trip to Vietnam and Cambodia, I can’t help but remember my first (of several) flight on Vietnam Airlines.
While I waited in the boarding area at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Saigon, two pilots waddled past us, weathered, tired, and perhaps hungover. I couldn’t tell if they were Russian or Eastern European, but they probably had sons old enough to fight in Vietnam 25 years earlier.
Like US carriers, Vietnam Airlines overbooked its flights.
Fly standby? No need. Ask for volunteers? Why bother.
I was lucky to secure a seat. But others weren’t so fortunate.
The rows consisted of two seats on each side of the aisle, but in some places, a third person managed to squeeze in between those two seats. And up front, between the cockpit and first row of seats there was a cargo space to store luggage. A handful of passengers stood up there for the entire flight.
When the pilots turned on the engines, I saw so much smoke I couldn’t see the seat in front of me. Luckily I’d read about those Russian planes and how they emitted some kind of condensation or exhaust in the cabin. Lonely Planet claimed it was basically harmless.
After the plane took off, there was neither an announcement about staying in one’s seat nor a flight attendant safety demonstration. People took out their home-cooked food while flight attendants appeared with weak orange soda or tea. On their final round, after collecting our garbage, they passed out keychains.
(Several years earlier, when I took my first CAAC flight in China, the flight attendants came around four times with sandalwood fans, keychains, cheap pens, and a postcard.)
When we approached Phnom Penh, I noticed the runway was surround by dry brown soil, not the green grass at Tan Son Nhat in Saigon.
The pilots landed the plane with a thump, accompanied by several passengers throwing up behind me.
yes, i got to nakhodka on a russian passenger boat, the baikal, from hong kong via yokohama all on my tod aged 19. The ship left the Ocean Terminal on Jan 2, where the weather was balmy for winter by hong kong standards. somewhere up near siberia, the sea froze and they scattered salt on the decks so nobody ‘accidentally’ slipped over board. It was fascinating to watch the ice blocks appear on the side as the ship cut its path through. everybody was then herded onto an overnight train (12 hours) to the town with the nearest airport. it was freeeeeeeeeeeeezing, far too cold for snow but everything was dusted white with frost. five minutes outside and your face started to freeze. that was where you caught those famous cattle planes with propellors. i’ve gone all cold just reliving it 🙂
I put on a sweater after reading this! What a great experience. When you do something like that, you know you can tolerate just about anything!
I took the Trans-Mongolian from Beijing to Moscow when I was 20, but that was in July. Even then, Siberia was quite cold at night. January would have been disastrous! My high school led trips to the USSR in the 80s when I was a student there, but it was always in January, so I never even thought about going. (It was hard enough for me to go without heat in central China in the winters and those temps only dipped below freezing.)
flight from hell , susan !
i have had two memorable ones in the negative sense too.
first was a flight from hk to the uk, in those days there were two obligatory stops en route so half an hour in the sky after leaving bangkok a couple of mega bangs – panic all round!! three of the four engines had exploded and they came round with free drinks for us in economy – visions of dying in a stupor crossed our minds. our plane then diverted to singapore, which took 2 hours on one engine. we were all put up at the hyatt, all expenses paid (quite an adventure as it was just me and my bro) plus a few friends from school who were on the same flight. of course when i landed in the uk three days later – my baggage was nowhere to be seen! it appeared some days later but had been rifled of some of the presents it contained :/
the other was on aeroflot, a seven hour flight from khabarovsk to moscow. wooden seats (like a bus) and the only thing they served was pinkish water.
compared to some of the more modern-day horrors, however, these were mere blimps on the radar of travel discomfort 🙂
Oh my goodness! Those were some crazy flights! At least you had your brother and some friends on that long flight to the UK. I wonder where your presents ended? When my husband and I flew to Lisbon for our honeymoon, two young boys were on the flight (the oldest no more than 8) and braved the five hour delay in the plane on the tarmac like seasoned travelers. We assumed they were flying there to visit their avôs.
That’s so cool you were in Khabarovsk. How in the world did you get there? By train?
LOL! Oh, Susan, yes! I still have somewhere the little “sickness” bag from one of my flights on “Hang on, Viet Nam”! We flew into Noi Bai in Ha Noi from Bangkok – I just remember people & water buffaloes in the rice fields that lined the edge of the airstrip. I was petrified during our descent that a buffalo would wander onto the runway. Flight into Phnom Penh was also crazy – just about overshot the runway on landing. O.O
I love it! But I can’t forget your photo of flying into Haiti. Such a sad looking runway 🙁