Good Morning Vietnam! (it's actually good night)...

Via Kate:
Hello from Vietnam! We finally made it here after a little bit of a delay and are now safetly settled into our hotel in Hanoi.

Day 1 started off a little rocky... I arrived in San Francisco on Thursday night and all was well. By 10:00 that night I had become violently ill and was vomiting blood. (sorry for all the nasty details). I realized that I could not get on the 14 hour flight to Hong Kong and Ally ran up to the ticket counter and switched our flight to Friday at noon. They pulled our packs of the plane and Ally hauled all of our crap to the front because I could barely walk (and had to make several stops at all of the bathrooms in the international terminal).. We took a cab to her car and went in search of urgent care/hospitals. We didn't know where to go for several reasons - After both of our time living in SF, neither one of us had to really visit a hospital, and secondly, I had new insurance from my new job and had no insurance card yet...hmmm.... So next comes our first error.

We went to San Francisco General Hospital. It's really big and we knew were it was. We should have stopped there. Arrived at this place and I have to tell you its one of the dirtiest places I have ever been in. That didn't stop us though - My urge to vomit and die made us stay. They got us right in to the triage nurse who evaluated me and because I wasn't half dead from gunshot wounds, was placed in the waiting room amonst San Francisco's finest assortment of mentally ill bums. And there we sat. I kept wanting to leave but was thinking it would be any minute and they would take me. Did I mention that we were sitting upright in the most uncomfortable metal chairs ever??? I thought I might die and finally after almost 4 hours, we saw the triage nurse again. I think after 5 hours I was given a bed and then a nurse came and gave me the most painful IV ever. I laid there for another hour (ally was afraid to sit as it was so dirty in there) and finally a medical student came to evaluate me. Soon it became apparent that I was not going to be out in time to make our noon flight. Ally called the airlines. There were no more flights available until TUESDAY! However, there was one ticket on the midnight flight that night (Friday).... I convinced her to leave on the noon flight (which also had a night layover in Hong Kong) in the hopes that I would be well enough to fly that night... Reluctantly she left.

Ally's side of the story...
I left katie in her room with the medical student (still haven't seen the doctor!) at 7 to e-mail our hotel and let them know we weren't going to make it and get some much needed coffee. At 9:10 when I got back to the hospital, kate said that the doctors wanted to do a scan on her to make sure it wasn't appedicitis, but that she was probably okay, and just had a virus. It was pretty clear that we were not going to make the noon flight.... so I called the airlines to reschedule. It turned out that there was only 1 more seat on the midnight flight and if we both didn't get on that, we wouldn't be able to get to hanoi until tuesday afternoon! Since we are leaving thursday for thailand, we didn't like that option.... so in a last minute decision, we decided I should take the noon flight and spend the night in hong kong and kate would take the midnight flight and I would meet her in hong kong on sunday morning and we would fly to hanoi together sunday afternoon. At this point it was 9:50 and I was supposed to be at the airport at 10! I had to leave poor kate in her hospital gown and just gave her a big hug before RUNNING out of the hospital, praying that I would indeed see kate 24 hours later! I made it to the airport by 10:30 and fortunately flew through check in and security, making it to the gate with time to spare. At this point, I hadn't slept in 2 days, and the night before I left I had only slept about 3 and a half hours... but I didn't want to sleep too much on the plane since i was arriving in hong kong at 6 and needed to get up again at 5 to meet kate. I fortunately found a hotel (although I still have NO CLUE where it is) and bought the lonely planet "hong kong experience" book.

Meanwhile in San franciso...
I laid there quite a bit longer - Had tests run - I will spare you the details except that it was one of the worst and most humiliating days of my life. They finally released me Friday afternoon, not really telling me what was wrong, just that my appendix wasn't awry like they had suspected. Ahh sigh of relief. My friend Russell came to the rescue and picked me up dirty and very upset from this very nasty place. He took me to his and Katie K's place where I subsequently showered and crashed while he filled my prescription and did my laundry (you don't want to know....). He also fed me good stomach sick food such as crackers and 7Up. Thank goodness for wonderful friends. I woke up at 7ish still unsure that i could make the flight. I felt miserable - My stomach was off, I had NO energy and felt slightly feverish.... Not how you want to feel getting on a 14 hour flight to Asia. Russell and Katie helped me up and to pack my newly washed clothes (THANKS SO MUCH) and Marian came over to take me to the airport. She and Kevin helped me carry my bags in and waited with me in the airport while I sipped sprite to make sure I was OK (THANKS SO MUCH GUYS!!)... I was feeling a bit better and made my way to the gate.

Got on the midnight flight to Hong Kong and fell asleep within minutes even though I had a center seat. I slept for a good 10-11 hours and woke up feeling all right. Got off at Hong Kong and made my way to look for Ally...

Meanwhile in Hong Kong (Ally) After checking in, I got to check my e-mail.... but no e-mail from kate telling me if she was coming or not! I freaked out a little and e-mailed Russell, who fortunatley called in the middle of the night to let me know that kate was on her way! (yeah, my phone works in hong kong!)

I tried to catch the 6am shuttle, but couldn't get on until 6:30. When I got to the airport, I found out that kate's plane was 40minutes early, so she had been there for almost an hour by the time I showed up and the area outside of customs looked almost empty! I was starting to worry, when I saw a lone girl sitting by the plants.... and it was Kate! :) I was SO HAPPY to see her alive and THERE in hong kong!!!

Back to Kate:
Found Ally outside of customs and was so happy! We had all morning and early afternoon to explore Hong Kong so we hitched the train to downtown. What a different world! It is such a big crazy city. We wandered around and first went to Ally's favorite building, a structural marvel, the Bank of China tower. Sadly it was closed (sunday) so we couldn't travel to the top but saw it in person none-the-less. We walked to the oldest temple in Hong Kong (Man Mo temple) and almost died of incense poisoning but it was cool. Then we went to get dim sum. Ally was very excited about this - As my stomach was still a bit off, I ate very little and sipped lots of yummy jasmine tea. After a short and sweet visit it was time to head back to the airport.

We next hopped a flight to Hanoi aboard Vietnam Airlines. I have to tell you that all of the Asian airliners are kept in much better shape than any of the american airlines... The flight was short and sweet and we arrived to Hanoi to a little guy holding a sign with our name. We headed into Hanoi on one of the craziest drives of my life... This city is filled with 10 gazillion people on motorbikes. There are no lights or stop signs or anything - Everyone just drives wherever - It is crazy. Oh, and they all honk too. I've never seen anything like it. This place is different than anyplace I have ever seen. We got to our hotel and we had to e-mail families to let them know we are alive and I'm slowly recovering from nasty stomach ailment... We plan to relax and take it easy as we are tired and tomorrow heading to Halong Bay for an overnight trip on a Chinese junk!!! So that is it for now! We will write more upon our return on Tuesday night! And yes, Mom, I am drinking plenty of fluids, taking medicine and taking vitamins and will get lots of sleep and be very careful.

Ta Ta for now!!