Pilgrimage by plane

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This was published 13 years ago

Pilgrimage by plane

As travellers criss-cross the country to celebrate the new year festival, George Mills rediscovers the joy of flying.

Mass transit ... the Lunar New Year in Ho Chi Minh City.

Mass transit ... the Lunar New Year in Ho Chi Minh City.Credit: AFP

In the frenzied lead-up to Vietnam's week-long Lunar New Year festival, the whole country seems to be on the move. Everywhere you go, people are hauling battered suitcases or struggling with fraying cardboard boxes. Travel agents work around the clock to meet demand for tickets and queues at the main bus terminals can extend hundreds of metres. Meanwhile, improvised bus stops spring up in suburban backlots as coach companies try to cram on as many people as possible.

Despite government efforts to stop this overcrowding, buses remain horribly full - not only with people but also with the mountains of gifts that form an integral part of a holiday that, for the Vietnamese, is like Christmas, New Year and Easter rolled into one.

The Lunar New Year festival, known locally as Tet, marks the beginning of the northern spring and is a time of renewal. In preparation, houses are scrubbed from top to bottom. People pay off their debts and settle disputes so they can face the future with confidence. It's a classic case of ''out with the old and in with the new''.

It is also, for most Vietnamese, their only holiday for the year. And because they are expected to spend Tet with their families, the days before the holiday - which this year began on February 3 - are a time of chaotic mass migration.

As Vietnam's economy booms, more people are shunning the buses and taking to the skies to embark on their annual pilgrimage home.

According to the country's civil aviation body, airline passenger numbers in the country last year rose 20 per cent on 2009 figures. And the International Air Transport Association predicts Vietnam will be the second-fastest-growing market in the world for domestic flights by 2014.

I witnessed this growth in air travel on a flight with a budget airline from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, as many people here still prefer to call the country's steamy, southern metropolis.

There's no question that the arrival of budget carriers has been key to the expansion of the aviation sector in Vietnam. My round-trip ticket costs a little more than $100, including taxes. And though this is not cheap in a country where a university graduate can expect to earn about $200 a month, it puts air travel within reach of many more people.

I take my airline's cheap shuttle bus to Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport. Even at 7.30 on a cold morning, Tet preparations are in full swing. Women stream into the city's pagodas to leave offerings for their ancestors and the city's huge flower market is awash with the pink peach blossom used to decorate homes in the holiday period.

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On the bus to the airport, I speak to a student who happens to be on the same flight to HCMC. While we're talking, he mentions, with an obvious case of nerves, that this is his first flight, ever.

''Don't worry,'' I try to reassure him. ''It's just like taking the bus.''

But, of course, it isn't.

As I browse the dreary shops at the Hanoi airport, I wonder when exactly flying became so normal. United Nations figures show that about 2.5 billion passengers flew in 2010, up 6.3 per cent on the year before.

In the past 12 months, in what had been a quiet year for me travel-wise, I had still managed to rack up about a dozen flights.

So when I board the full Airbus A320, I try to imagine I'm new to all this: I fix my gaze on the vanilla interior, the perfumed staff and the flecked carpets. I notice the whine of the airconditioning. And when I finally make it to my seat, there he is next to me - the student from the bus.

''So,'' I say, ''what do you make of it?''

''Well, it's kind of small,'' he says.

As we shoot along the runway, however, his mouth falls open in amazement. In a country where the roads are so potholed that it's rare to hit 70km/h, this speed seems almost supersonic.

When the aircraft lifts off, my neighbour emits a long, low groan. Watching him, I am conscious again of the unnatural feeling in the pit of your stomach as a plane ascends. My friend leans back in his seat, sucks in oxygen and grips the armrests. It isn't so much fear as confusion at all these new sensations.

And that's when I realise he isn't the only one. All around me are other first-time fliers. They fumble with their seatbelts and peer timidly out of the portholes at the cloud banks, before quickly turning away again.

When the plane levels out, people finally begin to settle. The babies stop crying and I get on with the serious business of flying: drinking my weak coffee and reading the in-flight magazine. My friend relaxes, too, and even gets up to explore the aircraft.

About half an hour into the flight, however, he taps me on the shoulder and whispers, ''Look, it's spectacular!''

We gaze out the window together. The cloud cover has dissipated. Far below is the deep emerald of the central highlands of Vietnam. Glittering rivers meander through densely forested mountains.

''I never thought of this,'' my friend says, shaking his head. ''I never imagined these views.''

As I stare at the tropical patchwork of jungle and rice paddies, I forget all about the terrible coffee on my tray table and the fact that my knees are jammed up against seat 8B. And for several glorious seconds, I simply relish the madness of being 10,000 metres above the ground in a gleaming silver bus.

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