Journey from Toronto to Hanoi

2012-07-06


The organization that I am working for book my flight for me to come to Hanoi. The flight was Air Canada. From Toronto to Vancouver is just over 5 hours. On this flight food was not served. If one wanted food they would have to purchase it. This is ridiculous as the flight is almost as long as going to London, UK. According to the flight attendant, Air Canada does not provide food on domestic flight. I understand if it is a short flight, but long flight, that is just cheap. For the next flight I will ask the organization not to use Air Canada.

A second disbelief that I had with Air Canada is luggage allowance. In international flight, Air Canada allow only on luggage while other airlines allow two. My contract is two years and my organization indicated that they would pay for two extra luggages; as a result I only made three luggages. I must admit one luggage contained my hair products. I am not high maintenance but I did not expect to find a lot of product for black people’s hair in Vietnam so I brought my own. Let’s stay on topic. So yes, when I got to the airport they said I had one

luggage and the two extra luggages I will need to pay for it. It was good that I made three luggages because I was still within my limit. But just so you know, the first luggage is $75Cdn and the second is $225. Very expensive!

The flight was a long flight and attempt was made to rest. But I did not sleep much as I knew I would arrive very late in Hanoi. Also I did not want to miss out on the movies on the flight. But disappointedly the movies were not that good. The foreign ones were very nice, so I spend my time watching Canadian movies and foreign films. I must say those were better than the Hollywood ones that were on the flight.

 Japan airport

  

Upon arrival to immigration in Hanoi, they saw that my visa had the date 29/ 07/2012 instead of 29/06/2012. The Vietnam embassy in Ottawa made a mistake. The immigration here insisted that I pay for a new visa. I insisted that it was them that made a mistake and I was not going to pay for a visa. After much
argument at the airport and my passport being passed around from one person to another; because only a few people understood what I was saying, they said I should take the flight back to Ottawa and get it changed as it is not the fault of Hanoi immigration. So we agreed that I pay $10USD and contact the embassy for my money back. So I paid and got a new visa. I will now call the Ottawa embassy for my money back. By the way this process took like an hour.

Upon leaving immigration, I went to get my luggage. When I got there two of my luggage was there but a third was not there. Where is this luggage I ask? Well it was not there. So I went to the lost and found counter. The person that was there was very helpful but had difficulties listing to what I was saying. He told
me the luggage was mine. I told him the luggage was not mine. He opened for me to look at the content in the bag and he believed the luggage was mine. He opened it, and I told him the bag and the content was not mine. We looked at the baggage tag number on my boarding pass and the tag number on the suitcase
which did not belong to me and discovered that it was the same. Apparently the ticket service in Toronto but my tag number on someone else’s baggage and vice verse.

After much standing at the airport I went to call the person who was meeting me at the airport to come with me to the “lost and found” counter. I was very happy to have called this girl in as she spoke fluent Vietnamese. Note to self, learn Vietnamese. So when this person came to speak with them we managed
to sort this issue out. This took another 30 minutes or so.

After this, we drove 45 minutes from the airport to my hotel in downtown Hanoi. At this point I was physically tired and mentally alert.