was a movie theater inside the mall that was right across the street from the airport. Online it said that they often showed American films so I was in luck.

      When we arrived at the airport Mary and I walked together until it was time for her to go through security and then we hugged goodbye. I wished I could be going to Australia with her but I had a job to get back to. It was a strange feelings being alone again. After some effort I finally found the baggage storage area and check in my big backpack. I paid 160,000 dong for them to hold my bag until 8:30pm. I then had to get out of the airport and across the street. This alone was a challenge. The airport was gated so I had to wander around the parking lot for a bit before I found a fence I could hop that put me out on the sidewalk of a busy street. Then I had to find the mall, which I fortunately had spotted on our car ride into the airport so I knew where to go. Though once I was in the mall finding the movie theater was another set of confusing steps.  I had to go through a maze of department store elevators and escalators to get to the 10^th floor. The two English movies they were showing that day were the “Danish Girl” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks”. I was hoping there would be more to choose from so that I could kill the most time possible but I would sooner watch the Danish Girl twice in a row than pay money to see Alvin and the Chipmunks.  For 1 ticket to “The Danish Girl” I paid 110,000 dong, but unfortunately it didn’t start until 4:40.

     I had two hours to kill until then. I mostly sat around in the lobby of the theater catching up on my travel journal. I also spent a long time trying to find places to charge my phone. Unfortunately the only free outlet seemed to be located in the bathroom so I sat on the floor in there and read while it charged, getting more than a few questioning looks. Even at the movie theater I was continuously amazed by the hospitality of the Vietnamese people and their effort to accommodate tourists. When they opened the doors to the theater a women who worked there, who had seen me waiting in the lobby, personally came and got me and told me I could go in now, as this had only been announced over the loud speaker in Vietnamese. I’m so glad we had such a good experience here, that our fears about hostility were put to rest and our own experiences countered what we had read about Vietnam. It really was as bump free of a trip as traveling abroad can be.

       The movie lasted until 7 pm, which still didn’t kill quite enough time but was significantly better than sitting at the airport for those 5 hours. The movie was good but sad. It seemed a bit like coming full circle for me, as my very first trip abroad, 2 years ago, had been to Denmark. Now, here I was in South East Asia watching a movie by myself, well traveled and confident. It was interesting to note the cultural differences of how the Vietnamese people interpreted the movie opposed to how I did. They often laughed at seemingly inappropriate times during the film. This somewhat changing the mood as I was watching it teary eyed. Anyway, I walked back over to the international terminal of the airport. It was just as difficult getting back in as it had been getting out. I limbo’ed under a car gate while a guard sitting in the booth eyed my confused but didn’t stop me. I pick up my bag an hour earlier than expected so they gave me some money back, this meant I now had hundreds of VN Dong left. I figured I could do some duty free shopping while I waiting for my midnight flight but unfortunately my check in counter didn’t open until 9, so again I had to wait. When it finally opened I got both my Tokyo and Denver boarding passes. It was weird seeing “Denver” on a boarding pass again. It had been 30 days since I had flown out of Colorado and it was going to be bittersweet coming back.

      I had 2 hours until my flight and dong to blow, no pun intended, so I shopped around the airport buying a cheap silk scarf, a painting and some very overpriced veggie fried rice for dinner. I had gotten an email from my tour group in Japan that they couldn’t take just me because there is a two-person minimum and no one else had signed up for that day. I offered, per my mom’s encouragement, to pay for two people so that I could go alone and not have to navigate Japan by myself. I had been counting on joining the tour so I hadn’t researched or planned for Japan at all. I waited with baited, tired, and probably smelly breath, to hear back from them as I boarded my long, overnight flight to Japan.