Brian’s Travel Spot: Vietnam

My Vietnamese Airlines Boeing 787-9 waiting at the gate at Heathrow's Terminal 4 to take me to Ho Chi Minh City.Welcome to another instalment of Brian’s Travel Spot, featuring Vietnam, a new destination for the Coffee Spot and for me personally. Having previously hardly set foot outside Western Europe and North America, the last 12 months have seen me visit China, Japan and now Vietnam for the first time. As it was with the two previous trips, this is for work, with time for some Coffee Spot duties tacked on at the start/end.

In another first for me, I flew out (and returned) on Vietnam Airlines. Having previously tried to travel only on British Airways or Virgin for long-haul flights, the last twelve months has seen me flying on a variety of airlines. Other than the annoyance at having my airmiles spread around all over the place, my (long haul) experience has been very positive, a trend that continued with Vietnam Airlines.

The trip itself took in a few days in Ho Chi Minh City, followed by a week there for business, and was rounded off by a week-long trip all the way up the coast by train to Hanoi, with stops at Hoi An and Hué along the way. I then flew back from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh and, from there, home.

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Brian’s Travel Spot: Shanghai to Chicago

The Willis (was Sears) Tower, Chicago's tallest building.Welcome to fourth instalment of my Brian’s Travel Spot series, which started with my flight out to Hong Kong, continued with my adventures in Hong Kong itself, then moved onto Shanghai, where I was spent a week on business before having the weekend to explore. This instalment covers the next leg of the trip, my flight across the International Date Line to Chicago, where I spent the next 10 days staying with friends before flying home, in the process, completing my first round-the-world trip.

Originally, this was going to be two separate trips. Chicago had been in my calendar for almost a year before work asked me to go to Shanghai. Since I had it in my head that I would already be flying to/from Chicago, my initial planning was based around returning from Shanghai after my meeting, spending a couple of days at home, suffering horrible jet lag in the process, then flying out to Chicago to do the same again. That, I decided, would be no fun. I briefly thought about cancelling the Chicago trip before checking out the (with hindsight) obvious option of flying from Shanghai to Chicago, a solution which had the bonus that I’d fly around the world in the process!

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