The Vietnam Airways lady studies me through her shade-of-pink spectacles, lowers her eyes, and tells me, “You have a problem”.
These are words no-one wants to hear as they wait to check-in for an international flight.
“Me? a problem? Surely, not,” I mutter to myself. “I’m an experienced traveller. There must be a mistake.”
“It’s not your ticket,” the lady says, somewhat sympathetically, in a way a doctor might prepare a patient for bad news.
“It’s your Vietnam visa. It’s valid from tomorrow, you’ll be arriving in Ho Chi Minh City today.”
I mostly arrange my own travel, no matter how complicated the
itinerary. Apart from turning up one day early for a flight out of
Atlanta, Georgia, and hopping onto the wrong hotel pick-up bus to a
travel conference, ending up at law society dinner, I’ve mostly enjoyed
stress-free travel.
Everything I arrange goes well. Until it doesn’t.
The trip south to north through Vietnam involved four train
journeys, one of them an overnight trip (that’s a story for another
day), two Airbnbs, four beach resorts and four city hotels spanning
nine destinations (Ho Chi Minh City, Mui He, Cam Ranh, Dalat, Quy Nhon,
Hoi An, Danang, Hue and Hanoi).
And, now, here I am at Melbourne airport on day one with limited
options to begin my journey. The most expensive option, it is suggested,
is to buy a new ticket for the following day’s flight. The most
inconvenient but cheapest option I’m offered is to take today’s flight
and, on arrival, find somewhere to wait for eight hours airside before
going through Vietnamese immigration at one minute past midnight
“Just don’t tell anyone why you’re hanging around,” the lady says. I
make further enquiries at Vietnam Airlines’ help desk and they advise
against the long pre-immigration wait. There’s nowhere to sit, they tell
me.
I imagine hanging around the airport for hours, perhaps days, like Tom Hanks, in the movie,The Terminal.
I end up buying a new ticket for the following day.
But the story doesn’t end there.
My British passport allows me a 45-day Vietnam visa stay but I have
only been given 30 days for a stay that is planned to last 38 days.
“You’ll have to extend your visa while in Vietnam,” says pink
spectacles.
Everything I read online says the visa extension process is easy. Until it isn’t.
After much, mostly wrong, advice from hoteliers, travel sites and
fellow travellers I left Hoi An to visit the Vietnam immigration office
in Danang, where I joined other foreign travellers with visa issues.
“You have an e-visa,” I was told by an officer whose demeanour indicates
the next thing he utters will not be to my liking.
“You can’t extend it until you are out of Vietnam. No exceptions,”
the man in military green told me, via a translation on his iPhone.
Next stop, Lynn’s Visa Services in a suburban side street in Danang
where Lynn’s 250-km Laos border run option and costs were explained to
me. I assume Lynn is offering me a good deal after noting on her website
that the company’s commitment to service “is not only professional but
also deeply rooted in their Christian values, influencing every aspect
of their business”.
Lynn’s 2.25 million dong fee (approx. US$90) covers the coach
journey to the border point, all paperwork to enter and depart Laos, and
re-enter Vietnam with a new visa.
Which is why, two days later, I waited on a street corner in Hoi An
at five in the morning to be picked up for a long day’s excursion to
the Lao border. Our motley band of travellers is fortified with coffee
and fried egg rolls at Lynn’s office before setting out on the five
hour coach ride to the Lao Bao border between Vietnam and Laos.
Lynn’s people are on the bus to check paperwork and take care of formalities at the Laos and Vietnam border points.
It’s a five-hour journey each way to the border and another 90
minutes dealing with the formalities between Vietnam and Laos
checkpoints. Uniformed border guards are positioned between the two
borders, checking visa and passports.
Many of those on the coach - possibly regulars on the border run -
closed the blinds and slept, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the
spectacular scenery; rivers tumbling below jungle covered cliffs and
the fast-passing glimpses of Vietnamese country life. For the price of a
new visa, I was being treated to a wonderful tour of north central
Vietnam.
Between leaving my hotel in Hoi An at dawn, and arriving back after
dark, the entire journey took more than 13 hours. But at least I had my
new visa.
Next time, though, I’llI check my visa before I leave home.