A Teacher in Saigon arrives in Saigon.

Chaotic and noisy with an intense energy! After all the planning and preparation I have arrived in sultry Saigon.

The flights were fairly uneventful, except I still remain partially deaf and unable to fully equalise my ears. I had prepared myself, based on warnings from School, for a dose of insanity at the airport in Saigon, but the passport control queue was short, my backpack was one of the first to trundle along the baggage carousel and the customs staff looked bored because all of their lines were empty. I’d say it took me a maximum of 10 minutes to get from the plane door to the outside world. Something I will have to remind myself of the next time I fly into Saigon and it’s not like that.

With my bags on a trolley I pushed through the glass doors to what I guess is the ‘arrivals hall’, though really the equivalent in Melbourne would be the doors that lead out to the arrivals drive-by pick up area outside the building. I found myself stepping outside, into the full humidity with my first taste of Saigon before me.

The crowds are waiting, five people deep in places, cheering each time the glass doors slide open. I would later be told that entire Vietnamese families, sometimes 15 plus people, come to the airport to pick up one relative. I knew that I needed to look for someone holding a sign with my name on it, but the sensory overload of the people, the noise and the humidity made it hard to focus. I couldn’t see anybody.

I must have been offered a ride in about 20 different taxis in the hour in took to finally locate Miss Bang. Sweating profusely when I meet her; Miss Bang says she was there the whole time. I looked in the spot where I finally found her numerous times in that hour, but I let it slide. Welcome to Vietnam!

The trip to the hotel was completely and utterly chaotic but with a strange rhythm. I loved the energy all around me. It reminded me of Cairo traffic, though there it’s mainly cars, here motorbikes zipping everywhere. By the time we arrived at the hotel I was so wrecked I forgot to even ask anything about where I was staying. All I could think about was shutting the door to my room, showering and sleeping.