This post is about my flight to Vietnam,
but the same trick can be applied to any trip, anywhere.
$700 per person, travelling from Cincinnati, OH to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – 2 connections with only 2 hours layover at each connection. What a deal! Especially coming from one of my favorite airlines: ANA airline. Flying to Vietnam is not usually comfortable for those who cannot afford First Class. Our total flight time was 21 hours, with 4 hours total of layover time. My ultimate goal is to try to make our trip as comfortable, in the most economical way, as possible.
Many flights are available, fly from Cincinnati to Ho Chi Minh City. They usually are around $1600 per person. The important factors, when it comes to picking out a good deal, are: the total flight time, how many connections, how long is the layover.
Keep in mind: Time = Money
If don’t have money, you’d better expect to lose time. Cheaper flights usually come with longer flight time and multiple or long layovers.
But if you find a cheap flight with short flight time and short layover, on a good airline, that’s a deal that doesn’t come very often.
Look at this sample above, of a trip from Cincinnati to Vietnam.
The price looks reasonable, compare to $1600 per person. Now let’s add up the flight time and layover. Flight time is around 21 hours and layover time is 20 hours!!!
It might not have any effect on you when you’re sitting at home booking your ticket, but after that 13 hours flight, trust me when I say to you, that you just want to be at your final destination.
You could make the most out of the layover by spending the day in city of the layover, but again, you will end up spending more money than you’ve planned. You could have just booked a more expensive flight and arrive at destination faster.
Let’s look at the other side of the story… the route that we took. Our total flight time was 21 hours. It took one hour to get to Chicago; 13 hours to reach Narita (Japan); and 7 hours to arrive at Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). We had 2 hour layover in Chicago, another 2 hour layover in Narita; neither of these were bad. With all the security checkpoints, they were just about right. We also needed to stretch our legs. We’ve heard many “horror” stories about passengers who missing their flights, because the airline didn’t allow enough time between connections!
In all truth, it was hard getting on to the final 7-hour leg to Vietnam (after 13 hours from the US). There were moments when we wished that we had allowed more time, and just booked a room and gotten some rest. No!! We have to stay on track. We kept telling ourselves that the plan was to spend our money in the Vietnam…where the exchange rate was more favorable! After all the “travel pain”, we wanted to get as much bang for our buck as we could.
There’s really no easier way to travel halfway around the world, without the pain of long flights. We did, however, make it as comfortable as possible by doing research ahead of time!
Yes, you are allowed to check 2 bags, and bring along 2 carry-on bags. However, think carefully about the torture of “dragging” these items to the airports and picking it up after 21 hours of flying. Travel light!
We had too much fun with the individual retractable remote control, which can be use to play games and navigate onscreen movie menu.
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