Vietjet offering millions of free flights, including from Brisbane, in 24-hour flash sale
Millions of flights, including to and from Brisbane, are up for grabs in an airline’s incredible 24-hour flash sale. Here’s how to have a chance at scoring some $0 flights.
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Millions of free tickets are up for grabs with a new airline that began flying into Brisbane in mid-June.
Vietjet, a low-budget Vietnamese airline, is holding a flash sale on Saturday, September 9, with flights available across the airline’s network, including domestic flights in its home country as well as international routes including India, Japan and Thailand.
Two flights depart Brisbane each week, on Mondays and Fridays, bound for Ho Chi Minh City.
The airline also began flying out of Sydney and Melbourne this year and plans to begin operating out of Perth in November.
Full-price return flights from Brisbane to Ho Chi Minh City start from $320, without promotions, which are running several times a week at the moment.
Discounted fares in Saturday’s sale are subject to availability and across any destination within Vietjet’s flight network from September 18 2023 to March 31 2024.
The aircraft used are Airbus A330-300 with 12 business seats, 18 in Skyboss and 347 in deluxe and economy.
To score free tickets, travellers need to visit the Vietjet website, vietjetair.com, or log on to the Vietjet app on September 9, with the 24-hour sale running from 0:00 to 23.59 GMT + 7 (from 3am on Saturday AEST). Millions of tickets will have $0 base fare but taxes and charges will apply. See the Vietjet website for terms and conditions.
REVIEW: A WHIRLWHIND TOUR OF VIETNAM
I recently visited Vietnam courtesy of Vietjet and undertook a whirlwind tour that included some destinations in the south of the country, close to Ho Chi Minh City, with highlights including a Vespa trip through the city’s surging traffic:
There are an estimated 8 million scooters and motorcycles in Ho Chi Minh City and they all seem to be on the road at the same time as me.
I’m riding pillion on a vintage Vespa, one of a dozen undertaking an evening tour of the city’s bars, street food outlets and clubs. We start in peak hour, and while there are some cars, it’s mainly motorbikes converging in all directions in a weaving, chaotic cacophony.
It’s heart-in-mouth as my driver Phuc confidently sails through intersections where rules seem to loosely apply, past plastic tubs stacked with tropical produce, clothing sellers and all manner of roadside food and noodle stalls. “Are you scared?” she asks at our first stop, presumably in response to my intermittent shrieks.
However, while I’m contemplating a full-blown anxiety attack, the locals seem chilled, a woman wearing a miniskirt and heels nonchalantly sits sidesaddle behind a male rider on a scooter, texting away.
Other motorbikes we pass are packed with families of five, a helmetless mother rides pillion with a baby on her hip, others are simultaneously chatting on mobiles, someone is weaving through traffic with a coffee table strapped to the back but road rage appears non-existent and somehow riders make room for each other in the nick of time and the traffic miraculously keeps moving.
After a while, I start to relax into being part of the river of humanity flowing along the streets and begin to take in the sights as we tear past: Notre Dame Cathedral, the landmark Central Post Office, the Reunification Palace and the War Remnants Museum – it’s purpose made clear by the bulky tank and chopper looming in the grounds.
As the evening wears on and the traffic thins, trepidation gives way to exhilaration. Perhaps the mood is enhanced by a stop for a cocktail at a rooftop bar, mine an alarming green brew dubbed Saigon by Night, sporting a large sprig of rosemary and a disc of orange rind dangling off the front. As I sip this jungle juice, we take in the clutch of high-rise thrusting skyways in the distance and the thick flow of tail-lights far below, signs of the booming economy and the ongoing development of this city of 10 million.
Soon our group of orange-helmeted travellers is back in the traffic, bobbing along like runaway ping-pong balls, headed for a concrete-floored, open-air seafood restaurant. Here we sit in small orange plastic chairs at a long table clad in a checked cloth and dine on clams in a lemongrass-heavy broth, frogs’ legs, and piles of crab fried with chilli and salt.
Next we’re off to another street food stall where female cooks fashion banh xeo crepes in large, flat pans over a glowering coal fire and fill them with chunks of pork, bean shoots and prawns. We are seated outside, perched on stools around a long aluminium table where we take a slice of crepe and with the guidance of our Vespa Adventures tour leader Kathy, place it at the centre of an assortment of green leaves and veg and roll it up with chopsticks. We later do the same with pieces of flattened garlicky beef.
Soon we’re back on the bikes and head to a silent coffee shop where patrons are banned from speaking while musicians perform, and then we’re off to Carmen, a Latino music club, where the singers and band cover a joyous repertoire from ABBA to Ricky Martin.
I’ve travelled to Vietnam with Vietjet, the low-budget Vietnamese airline which began flying into Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this year. They’re serious about making inroads into the Australian market, with economy fares recently on special for $200 return (full fare is $320) and offers often on all seating categories up to business, with new promotions each week. There’s no entertainment system on the Airbus A330-300s and food in economy is extra. In business, there’s plenty of room and while the seats don’t lie flat, they almost do. Food is included, with a choice of Vietnamese dishes such as pho, complete with a tub of fresh herbs to add to the steaming beef broth that is Vietnam’s national dish, or the country’s favourite sandwich, banh mi.
Our group is given a short tour of the south of the country, visiting, via a domestic flight of less than an hour, the well-run, five-star Movenpick Resort at Cam Ranh, with day trips further up a long strip of beach to seaside Nha Trang, where we visit the 8th-century Po Nagar Cham Towers, lunch out of town at a rural cooking school set amid rice paddies and take a sunset cruise on the bay.
At the beachfront Movenpick, accommodation varies between cabins and large, luxurious hotel rooms. There’s a focus on quality food and the giant ice cream sculptures dotted around are soon to become more relevant when the brand’s ice cream finally lands later in the year.
We also visit the Mekong Delta, about a 2.5-hour bus trip south of Ho Chi Minh City, wearing colourful plastic ponchos as a storm drops in on our boat that’s slowly gliding along the chocolate waters of the Mekong River while we snack on mangoes and rambutan. Soon we’re at a farm drinking coconut juice from freshly plucked fruit, then in small wooden boats being paddled up a tributary of the mighty river, to enjoy cumquat and jasmine tea and pineapple sprinkled with a dry mix of chilli, garlic and salt in a rustic teahouse, a tranquil stop in this fertile rural region.
In Ho Chi Minh City (many locals still refer to it as Saigon) we have achance to wander. A visit to the flower markets uncovers a street lined with blooms, with large easels of flowers being strapped to scooters for dispatch to funerals.
We halt for banh mi at a hole in the wall with a queue snaking out the door, the crunchy baguette stuffed with pork floss, sausage, pate and fresh chilli and greens. Across the road, I grab a bracingly strong iced coffee (Vietnam is the world’s second-largest producer of coffee) made with condensed milk, perfect for a pep-up in the humid heat. But it’s at the city’s Ben Thanh market where a trove of the city’s street food can be mined – durian juice, coconut milk coffee, snails, oysters, sticky rice, pho – as well as clothing, knock-off handbags, coffee beans and fresh produce.
We stay in the city centre – its treed parks and boulevards pointers to the country’s French colonial era – at the lovely Hotel des Arts Saigon MGallery, with spacious, parquetry-floored rooms, and rooftop bar and pool.
The national love of caffeine is evident in the plethora of coffee shops in the area, there’s a craft beer scene and a chocolate shop, Maison Marou, where local cocao is teamed with inventive flavours including “pho spice”, a delicious taste of a quickly evolving city, blending old and new.
BOOK IT NOW
On September 9, millions of free tickets are on offer across Vietjet’s domestic and international network. The website outlines terms and conditions. Promotional fares are released each week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Brisbane to Ho Chi Minh City flights are Mondays and Fridays.
vietjetair.com/en
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