world record... pt6/7

DAY6(7)

ASIA

We land in Hong Kong and pull up a pew as we’ve got three hours before our connection to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Martin goes to get some money to change to Vietnamese Dong. But soon comes back sulking because he can’t find an ATM. I of course mange to find an ATM and get 2,500HK dollars which is exciting, what’s more is when its changed into Vietnamese Dong we become millionaires. 25,000Dong is £1. So I return to Martin a millionaire. We board the plane to Ho Chi Minh City and are on our way to the final destination. When we arrive at Ho Chi Minh City it’s about 8pm and the connection to the drop zone in Nha Trang is not till 5:55am the next morning. So we need somewhere to stay, we head over to airport information and they make a reservation for us at a hotel. They also arrange for a taxi to the hotel, which is hugely helpful as outside the airport it’s similar to Venezuela in that it is chaos and people mob us. Being a Westerner means that street sellers, taxi drivers, everyone wants your custom they are desperate to make a living. One thing I have realized from being in different cultures in the last week at that living in the UK we literally have no idea. No idea about real life, what it means to struggle. We are so comfortable, life is easy. We get into the taxi and head towards the hotel. Ho Chi Minh City is crazy, the roads are total mayhem. Everyone drives mo-peds there are about 20 mo-peds to every car on the road. I saw a guy with a whole pile of boxes strapped to the back of his bike. Endless couples, even families sharing one bike. One bike even had a family of five all squeezed on. You can imagine the state of the roads with bikes everywhere. When we get to the hotel we have something to eat in the hotel restaurant. Martin orders an authentic Vietnamese dish I on the other hand cause a huge controversy and upset Martin by asking if they have ketchup and order chicken and chips. We eat and realize that is only the 4th real, non-airplane food meal we’ve had. The whole bill only works out at about £6 it is so cheap. We go back to the hotel and straight to bed as we’ve got another early start with our car to the airport booked at 3:30am.

We arrive at the airport just before 4o’clock in the morning and our flight isn’t till 5:55. The airport is closed, all the lights are out and doors locked. I didn’t know that airports even shut. It makes sense though as Ho Chi Minh City airport is hardly LAX or Heathrow. So now were sitting outside the airport and waiting, wondering what the time the airport opens. The airport finally opens and we check in. The flight was with an internal Vietnamese airline. So we hoped that everything was above board. Whilst waiting at the gate I had a look round to see if there was anything to eat for breakfast. I came across a ham and cheese sandwich for 52,000Dong. So I bought a couple and sat down with Martin to eat what I thought would be a perfectly harmless sandwich. I was wrong. I bit into the sandwich and was nearly sick.

The bread was as hard as stone, I opened up the sandwich and inside the lettuce was black and the ham brown. Disgusting. Mine went straight in the bin, I looked over at Martin who shrugged his shoulders and carried on eating.

We boarded the flight and aside from it being an old plane the journey thankfully was fine. We arrive at Nha Trang airport, which is the size of my back garden and the terminal building the size of the shed! Outside we look for a our arranged transfer who is not there, we are then hounded and circled by about 6 or 7 seven taxi drivers all shouting at us “you want taxi, you want taxi?” We tried to tell them no but that didn’t mean anything to them and they persisted that we needed a taxi. This went on for about 10minutes and they finally left us alone as we walked back into the airport, or shed. I tried to phone the number we had for the drop zone, a guy called Hank but my phone wasn’t working. We didn’t have an address just a phone number that wasn’t working.

So we were stuck.

I just kept trying my phone but to no avail. An hour passed and the situation hadn’t changed. We had no idea of where we were going, and no way of finding out, we were stranded in Vietnam. At this point the airport staff started to turn out the lights – Martin and me looked at each other. Martin prayed “Jesus I know you didn’t bring me here for nothing…” One of the staff started to walk towards us and the other began to lock one set of the doors. The one walking towards us pointed to the door. What was he going to do? Where were we going to go? Just then a little Vietnamese man barged through the doors, past the staff and started to wave around a piece of paper with our names on it. Just in time. The taxi drops us at the drop zone, which is on the beach. There is no one around. The runway is a different location. So now we are on a beach in Vietnam waiting under a tent covered in skydive posters. Well at lest we’re half way there. We are told by the taxi driver to wait at the beach and someone will come and pick us up. So we wait. We’re sitting on the beach for about 2hours before we are finally picked up by Hank. Hank takes us to the runway were there are other jumpers and there seems to be a bit of an atmosphere about the world record. Hank introduces us to Daryl and Steve who have set up the whole event skydive Vietnam. The event is a boogie, a skydive festival with people from all over the world coming to jump. We talk to Daryl and Steve who are concerned about the weather as there is very low cloud cover, which is obviously a problem if you want to skydive. It is decided that in order for Martin to set the world record they will do a ‘hop and pop.’ A hop and pop is jump at a low altitude at around 4,000ft with a standard jump being around 12,000-14,000ft. You hop out the plane and pop open your canopy with no freefall. Martin was going to jump with Wendy Smith as his camerawomen. Wendy Smith is an award winning camerawomen and considered to be the top female skydiver in the world. After he’d been briefed he came looking a little worried. He would be jumping from a helicopter, which he’s never done before and landing on a beach, which he’d never done before. Not only that but because of the cloud cover he’d be jumping from 2,800ft, which is very low. The lowest he’d jumped previous was 8,000. Obviously very tired and very jet lagged he was concerned but knew he had no choice but to jump. He was so close to setting a Guinness World Record. I was taken back to the beach with everyone else that wouldn’t be able to jump. By the time I got back to the beach it was packed with locals. Around 700 locals had turned out just to see the skydives.

Whilst waiting for the jumpers I decided to get some water from a street seller. It cost me 10,000dong, which is about 35p I was amazed at how cheap everything was. When I got back Daryl told me that a few of the locals were laughing at me, he asked how much I paid for the water. Apparently they saw me coming and I paid double what I should have. I’m sure that 20p means a lot more to them than it does me and if it helps them survive then I’ll get over it.

By now people had begun to jump and the crowds were loving it. They were going mental clapping and cheering as each person landed. Martin landed safely and set the world record for skydiving on six continents in six days!!! At last we could relax. Hank arranged for us to back to the hotel he was staying at where we could wait for our taxi back to Nha Trang airport. We had a few hours to kill before our very long journey home so we decided to have a look round the shops to soak up some culture. We had a look for something eatable, something our delicate stomachs could handle. We approached a street seller who selling some sort of baguettes but it looked a little dangerous so we just asked to have the bread and played it safe. As we were walking around a guy on a mo-ped followed us asking if we wanted a lift. We told him we were ok but he persisted to follow us for the 20 minutes convinced we would change our minds. It was quite intimidating, being followed. We go back to the hotel, get the taxi and head to the airport.

At the airport we are waiting in departures to board the plane when the flight to Ho Chi Minh City is cancelled. That means we will miss our flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong. We were going to stay in Hong Kong and relax over night but now that’s not going to happen. In the departure lounge we recognize a couple from earlier, Omar and Sherry. Omar tells us that Hank is working out how we can get back to Ho Chi Minh City in the quickest way possible. There are no flights to Ho Chi Minh City until the following morning so Hank books the four of us on an overnight train meaning we will get to Ho Chi Minh City around 4am. That’s about five hours earlier than if we waited for a flight.

The train is absolutely out of this world. We were constantly asked to buy stuff. It took an hour before we were all left alone. The train itself was made of cabins each with six beds inside. They were so small, Martin could not lay down flat, you were unable to even sit up in the bed, and it was ridiculously cramped. The toilet was a hole in the floor with a pedal to release water as a chain. There was no on board food trolley or bar. After the most mental journey ever we arrived at Ho Chi Minh City at 4o’clock in the morning. Omar and Sherry’s flight was at 9 and we got booked on to the next available flight, which was at 11:40. After speaking to Omer it turns out that he is a stunt double in films as well as doing commercials that use skydiving. The both of them were two of the nicest people you could ever meet, they left to go back to America and we were left with another 3 hours to wait before our flight to Hong Kong. We finally get to Hong Kong at 3o’clock in the afternoon and our flight to London isn’t till 1o’clock in the morning. So this time we had a 10hour wait to get on a 13hour flight. We found an Internet point, had something to eat and slept a lot waiting for the flight. By now we were both gone, our body clocks didn’t have clue what time zone we were in, we were shattered. Boarding finally came around. We got on the plane and were on our way home with the record 6 jumps, 6 continents in 159 hours- 6days 7hours. Crossing the date line, however, turned the official time to 7days 7 hours- still a world record!!!

On the long flight home I had some time to reflect on what I have just been a part of, incredible. I thought about how blessed I am at home in comparison to the desperation in places like Vietnam and Venezuela as well as how lucky I am to be able to go all over the world. I hope and pray that the trip wasn’t in vain as the whole purpose was to raise awareness and then funds for the aids orphans in South Africa. Someone once said, “If you want something you’ve never had before then you need to do something you’ve never done before.” This trip has never been done before and now potentially aids orphans in Africa will have something they’ve never had before….