I hope everyone is getting ready for some relaxing downtime in the next week. We kicked off the holiday season with an evening as a team at Frances, with Executive Chef Melissa Perello cooking an incredible dinner for us. Plus we dressed in formal attire which was pretty exciting to see each other all dolled up. Tis the season for some company loving!
Robert gives his toast looking quite dapper
Despite the fact that we are in Vietnam, we are still working.
Gourmet Garden in Hoi An
The distance between San Francisco and Hanoi is 7,300.67 miles (or for the people who use real units: 11,748.97 km).
So it is a long flight, with a least one stop. Be sure to bring something to not be bored to death during the flight, the airport waiting time, and other delays.
Waiting in SFO
Zhenya was the first to arrive (October 2), Kevin followed (October 4), then Matt and Jason (October 5), Witold and me (October 6), Nate and Giorgio (October 8), David and Kirk (October 19), and finally Tom (October 24).
My trip
I flew with Korean Airline. I departed SFO ( San Francisco Airport ), to ICN ( Seoul Incheon Airport ). It is a 12 hours flight, mostly during the night, and above the water, so I didn’t get many awesome views from the sky. Well except for take off …
San Francisco from the sky
When I arrived at ICN, I was of course totally jet lagged, tired, and grumpy. But ICN is an awesome airport: gigantic, quiet, clean, modern. And it was also my first contact with Asia! After leaving the plane, I had to go through a random and stupid security test which took forever.
Busy Airport
Korean Airline Hostess in Seoul
After that, I walked randomly in the airport trying to find Witold. We flew on different airlines, with only a 20 min gap between our flights.
Parts of the airport were full of people and others very quiet and peaceful. Like every airport, it’s full of stores selling beauty stuff, electronics and fast food.
Zen Airport
Busy ICN
I finally found Witold in front of his next flight gate. A few minutes later it was time to grab my flight from Seoul to Hanoi.
Reactor
Once arrived in Hanoi, we had to pass the border. You can buy your visa their if you don’t have one. It is cheaper this way. I bought mine in San Francisco, but Witold bought his at the border.
The next step was to get a taxi to go to the Old Quarter, find a hotel, and finally get some sleep!
Pictures From Thomas Genin
Flag of Vietnam
Expensify tries to be a cutting-edge company. We use awesome new technology and try to detect the new tendencies of the world of the expense report. But Expensify also tries to do some innovation on the side of the “team spirit building”.
One of these initiative is the annual offshore. Every year, Expensify spends one month abroad. This tradition was born in the previous start-up of the “oldest” team member and has been naturally repeated for the Expensify adventure.
It is pretty straight forward: the team goes to work in another country. By the team I mean the whole team: CEO, CFO, engineers and non-technical employees.
We spent a few hours to discuss the choice of the destination. The requirements were pretty simple: a “cheap” country with decent access to the Internet, if possible a country that nobody has visited yet, awesome weather and an easy-to-get visa. The two finalists were Argentina and Vietnam. After a terrible debate, Vietnam was the winner.
So we booked airplane tickets to Hanoi, with a return date 30 days later. And over the course of a week, we were all in Vietnam!
This post is just the first one a series of post which will explain our trip and its great moments.
