June 16th, 2023
Saigon, Vietnam
Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! We’re going to really start covering the vacation, and it all starts on the morning of June 16th. For the most part, we’ve visited every relative we’re ever going to visit (Well, there’s one more group we haven’t visited yet, but we won’t see them for about 10 days. You’ll get a break, don’t worry) and we can now start really enjoying the adventure.
By the morning of June 16th, the sickness had mostly gone away and now I could be a little more active. The taste I was complaining about had almost entirely abated, and as the day progressed the situation got even better. Today, we were going to fly to a new city where the traveling really starts. That city is called Phuket, and it’s in Thailand.
Never heard of Phuket before? Then you’re probably living under a rock. Phuket is a hugely well-known city in Thailand and around the world. Millions of people visit Phuket every single year, and this year I would join those millions.
In the morning, we got up and immediately took a Grab taxi to the airport. It wasn’t long before we arrived and after saying bye to my grandparents, we entered the airport. After checking in, we went into the line for security and met the group we’d be traveling with. The next seven days of the trip would be spent with family friends who was also visiting Vietnam at the same time that we had— just that morning they’d driven to Saigon Airport from the nearby coastal city of Vung Tau. They had another kid who was also about to start his freshman year named Adan.
We had an awkward encounter… in the security line of all places and after I briefly panicked due to a dehydration crisis, we finally met up with Adan’s other friends who would be coming with us and prepared for takeoff. We grabbed some food from the airport for breakfast and ate in the short amount of time that was left before we then boarded a small truck on the side of the airport that would take us to our flight.
It wasn’t long before we entered the plane and began to move down the runway. Once again, I pulled out my phone to record the takeoff. I pressed the record button and waited. A few minutes passed, and we were still rolling down the runway. I stopped.
“What are you doing?” Casey demanded. He was sitting next to me for the flight. “Record it.”
I realized that there were still going to be several minutes until the plane reached the other side of the runway. “There’s still several minutes,” I insisted.
Casey didn’t accept this, so we started placing bets on when the plane would take off. Casey was pretty sure that the plane would take off real soon, but I was sure that it was going to be a while. The plane ended up favoring my guess, and took off way after I thought it would take off. From there, it was just a couple of hours until we reached Phuket.
If you wanted to see the takeoff, here you go. The video quality might not be good because I was on a battery conservation mode at the time.
The flight went by very slowly. It took about forty five minutes for us to reach the ocean that separates Southern Vietnam from Thailand. I watched the endless array of towns in the Southern part of the country as we passed through the Mekong. I have suspicions that at one point we flew over Cambodian airspace, but I don’t have any confirmation that this happened.
An image of the view outside our plane window as it was flying over South Vietnam. This river MIGHT be the Mekong, although I have no way to confirm that.
Once we flew over the ocean on our way to Thailand, I started to get bored since there isn’t much to look at when it’s just the sea in every direction. I turned my attention back inside the plane and ordered some food. Both my brother and I got a cup of noodles which we ate as the flight continued. Shortly after we were done eating, the plane began to arrive at our destination. We flew directly over Thailand’s countryside and I saw for the first time it was not so different from Vietnam’s. There were lots of motorbikes and it was fairly crowded. I took several minutes to look around before we landed at the runway.
Here’s the landing video.
After landing and getting sim cards (Once again, only I got a sim card cuz I’m better. Obviously Casey complained) I got a bloody nose out of my still recovering body.
I know, big surprise. This was one of the more miserable moments during the trip, no doubt. I was in a pretty bad condition when we started to drive to our hotel. I took a few pictures as we drove to the hotel, and I saw nothing but jungle on every direction with the occasional building or two along the way. The area is quite mountainous which surprised me (I was expecting something more flat) and the drive took forever. The island was much bigger than I anticipated. On a map it looks so small— just ten miles in width and thirty miles in height. Yet the drive took forever– I found out now it was only about a fifteen mile drive but it still took forever. When we finally arrived, the bloody nose thing was still a massive issue and I was getting uncomfortable being in this position in front of a bunch of people I’d be spending the next week with. As we were checking in to the hotel, I went to the restroom to clear out the issue. It calmed down after a little while, and finally I went to take a look at the hotel room.
If you’ve been on any vacation in America, you know the hotels are quite expensive and the rooms are quite small. Usually they won’t have much— maybe a couple beds here and there, a bathroom with a shower, and if you’re lucky enough you’ll also get a balcony with good or bad views depending on where you stay. In Southeast Asia, it’s totally different. Everything is cheap, and it’s way bigger. Screw the phrase “everything’s bigger in Texas”, let’s change it to “Everything’s bigger in Thailand!” The room had two massive beds with a TV and this amazing view of the little town we were in (Note: Phuket is technically a city but it’s also an island which the city is on. We were in a small town on the opposite side to the city) and that’s not even the craziest part. The room also included a staircase that led to the second floor of our suite. And on this second floor included a couch, a dining room, AND a HOT TUB on the balcony partially looking over the ocean. Seriously, how can you get any more spoiled than this?
The View from our hotel
Since I was still tired, the family decided to stay in the hotel room and rest for the day before going on more wild excursions tomorrow. I laid in bed and rested for about… about five minutes, because then we ordered room service. After this, we were supposed to brush our teeth, but it turned out that we actually forgot to bring toothpaste from Saigon. Since we obviously couldn’t go back to Saigon to get the toothpaste, we were kind of stuck, and Casey volunteered… cough cough, we volunteered Casey to call the room service number again for toothpaste. And yes, Casey’s about to do something funny again.
Casey dialed up the room service and it wasn’t long before someone picked up. “What’s up, cuh?” He said into the phone. “Yeah, uh, do you have any toothpaste for us?” He asked. The person on the other end said a reply, then asked him if he wanted room service. No one intended to buy any more food and drink, but Casey was like, “Yeah, actually, could I get a glass of orange juice?” After the person confirmed the order, Casey put the phone down. Everyone else in the room had been watching Casey like you would watch TV and the reactions were a little mixed. I was used to Casey being a comedian like this, so I was rolling around on the bed laughing. Our parents were slightly annoyed by this but ultimately didn’t do anything about it, and so Casey ended up getting his orange juice just as he wanted.
The rest of the day was spent doing just about nothing. Everyone wanted to take a quick recharge before the real adventuring began tomorrow, especially me, who was still kind of sick. The other guys who we were going to be spending the week with were already going out to get lunch, so we had some catching up in terms of energy to do. I pulled out my computer at some points during the afternoon to text, watch YouTube, and play games while Casey tried to get the hot tub on the second floor going. He filled it up after about an hour, and then I promptly discovered it while it was filled up. I quickly knew that Casey was the one who did it because… well, it’s Casey, but I wasn’t sure if he was allowed to fill it up yet. I ended up draining the hot tub, undoing an hour of his patience with a single pull. This made Casey very angry later on and it turned out that he did have our parents’ consent, I just wasn’t looking at the time. We eventually agreed to refill the hot tub later on, and I made sure not to interfere with it.
We still needed to do something while waiting all that time for the hot tub to fill in. We all decided to venture out onto the streets for dinner. After walking along a road that ran parallel to the beach for a while, we came across this restaurant which sold lots of seafood. We ended up sitting there for dinner. Not much happened at dinner, but the crab we ate was pretty damn tasty. I spent most of my time staring at the ceiling of the buildings because it contained so many different flags on it. After dinner, we walked along the beach for a little while. It was pretty dark and the sun already set, but the water was surprisingly warm and it was fairly active— I saw lots of people flying kites and kids running around the beaches.
After a little bit of this, we went back to the hotel. The hot tub had filled itself up completely while we were gone, so Casey immediately got excited and took a dip. I sat on the chair near the balcony and enjoyed the view of the beach just a few minutes’ walk away. My parents eventually joined Casey in the tub and Casey, being chaotic (I mean you’ve seen three or four examples of his wildness by this point, and I still have several more on the way this trip), started splashing water all over the place. I got a bit of water on me while he went on his rampage. If this was in another place like back in the states, I’d be freezing cold, but here I didn’t really worry simply because of how warm the place was. Cold had no meaning in these parts. The last time I felt a real breeze was on the flight to Taipei from San Francisco.
We spent a couple more hours chilling around before we eventually had to go to sleep. We’d need every calorie we could get for the journey tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’d do a lot of stuff. You’ve probably gotten impatient with reading as I visit every single person in Saigon and then get sick right as all the fun stuff starts. We’re finally getting to the real action. We’re headed on a day trip to a new place, and at the time I’m writing this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the Southern Hemisphere… by about 500 miles. We were headed for the Pee Pee islands— I mean… we were headed for the— cliffhanger
Go read Part 5 to find out
Or wait a few days for the release if it isn’t out yet
Or Google it…