Day 16: Going Home

We have the morning for a little shopping in HCM City before starting our journey back home. Our last chance to enjoy Vietnam traffic! We pass by and outdoor concert and motorist pull over to enjoy the music too.

Incheon Airport

We have an overnight stopover in South Korea's Incheon Airport, rated one of the best airports in the world! Since SF isn't feeling well and it's the middle of the night, we opt to stay at the airport, have a bite and try to get some sleep at the Spa on Air. For 20,000 Won (about $23 CDN), you can have a safe place to store your luggage, have a shower, use the spa facilities, book a private sleeping room for a little more money, or sleep in the co-ed common room. The facilities are quite clean and the common room is monitored, so it feel quite safe. We're given a gym uniform (t-shirt and shorts) that must be worn while in the spa. Men and women have separate spa, shower and washrooms, and like a typical Korean bathhouse, people just walk around nekkid. Good thing I'm not wearing my glasses. In the common sleeping room, I opt for a lounge chair that offers a bit more isolation whereas SF takes a sleeping mat provided. People come and go through the night so you're not sure who will share your floor space. SF: "I woke up 3 times and there was someone new next to me each time!!" (Some covert pictures from SF)

There is a craft centre in the airport!! Promoting Korean culture and craft, you can create a souvenir to take home with you while you wait for your flight. We are in luck! Today's craft is a Korean paper doll, which we were eye-balling on our initial stop-over when we were heading to Cambodia. This is known as Hanji craft, Korean paper craft. The spritely craft elf (instructor) in traditional Korean garb checks our boarding passes to make sure we have enough time to complete the project and gives us each a paper doll form. Then we receive a kit of different coloured tissue papers that are already cut to size and some glue. The elf gives us tips on what order to start with and there's a completed sample for us follow. The craft elf is very encouraging and they even provide a handy plastic tube to transport your artistic effort.

Things Learned:

- wish we had a longer stay in Cambodia, but we got to experience a rich and beautiful slice of its history

- both countries have experienced terrible atrocities in the recent past, but people are resilient and there is much kindness and beauty to know in these countries

- The Vietnamese written language was once a modified form of Chinese characters. From the 1520's Catholic missionaries began using the latin letter system to represent Vietnamese words and it continued to develop till Emporer Khai Dinh abolished the old character writing system in 1918. From the 1930's the latin alphabet has been the main writing system of Vietnam and current generations have little to no understanding of the asian characters. (I always thought it was a phonetic version of the language like pinyin)

One of the saddest things we learned on the trip was about the chemical warfare used in the Vietnam War and the effects of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide causing diseases and deformities that is passed down genetically. Many families struggle to care for those affected and it is unknown how many generations will still continue to suffer.

We had the opportunity to attend a National Geographic Talk with Catherine Karnow right after we returned from our trip, which was a great summation of all that we had experienced. She has a great love for Vietnam and also had some insight into this issue.

For information of how to help, visit Children of Vietnam.

All in all, we had a wonderful trip in these 2 beautiful countries. Thanks to Handspan and all our guides who took very good care of us. When we couldn't find a group tour that would fit our needs, SF found Handspan online and they helped us to arrange our trip and were very flexible and accomodating if we wanted to make changes along the way. Local guides met us at each location so we didn't have to haggle with taxi or tuk tuk drivers. We were lazy this time and left the whole itinerary in the hands of the tour company, but they also organize shorter tours and expeditions if you wanted a mix of independant and guided travel. Aside from a minor miscommunication, Handspan exceeded our expectations and I would recommend checking them out if you ever wish to travel to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos or Myanmar.

© Amy Lee 2013