Getting to Vietnam

Getting to Hanoi was an odyssey. The trip involved 36 straight hours of travel followed by 14 days of quarantine. We survived on lollipops, Doritos and iPads. If you have never done a cross Pacific flight with 6 children, well, have you even really lived?

Quentin excited for his first flight. Ruthie Wynn receiving the award for best behaved traveler.

Quentin, surviving on his favorite food.

Getting to Vietnam during COVID-19 was not easy. Vietnam is handling COVID-19 really, really well. Like insanely well. Especially compared to the United States. Prior to our travel, Vietnam had less than 1500 cases of COVID total. A large part of Vietnam’s success battling COVID-19 was the closure of all borders and suspension of most commercial flights. The government also instituted a mandatory government-monitored quarantine for all arrivals. Most arrivals go to a quarantine camp in a northern province – we went to the Intercontinental Hotel in Hanoi. After months of waiting to travel, we settled in at the Intercontinental for our long, completely uneventful, every-day-will-be-exactly-the-same quarantine. Don’t ask me how it was, I honestly have blocked it all out. The day we got out of quarantine, there was a new outbreak, and everything closed.

A few things I really had not thought of:

During travel, most airports were operating with limited staffing and we arrived at most layover locations in the middle of the night. There was no food to be found!

Having a hotel room with a balcony during quarantine just might save your sanity.

Hotel bathrooms make good bedrooms.