VINAdventures

adventures in bureaucracy:

no stay in viet nam is truly complete until you find yourself in a tangle of vietnamese red tape. when i first moved here, back in 2000, i was convinced this infuriating mess - the wait, the inefficiency, the back and forth, the shuffling of paperwork, the uncanny experience of having just-awakened-from-her-nap-and-now-rather-surly employee A tell you that your request is impossible and then having just-back-from-lunch-and-equally-grumpy employee B confirm 30 seconds later the exact opposite - was a product of communist bureaucracy. after spending 10 months in paris, however, i now suspect otherwise...

anyway, i've been in viet nam for the last seven weeks on a single-entry student visa. since the plan is to skip over to cambodia for a few days with knox after the end of my program, then fly back to ha noi and work our way back down to sai gon, i need the status of my visa changed. and pronto. being the type A nut job that i am, i naturally jumped on this as soon as i got to town. and yet, as week three in hcmc draws to its close, i find that i have gotten myself nowhere. thought it would be best to go through the "liason" at my school, who, after announcing that it would cost $150 to change my status to multiple entry (what what what??), just yesterday revealed to me that she actually knows nothing about the visa process. right. so i teamed up with another gal in the program to scout the local travel agencies, and between the two of us, we talked to five different places: number one said "impossible," two said "of course, $65," the gal at place number three had too thick an accent to understand, and the last two said "re-entry visa - $35." we decided to go with them.

all you do is pay $10 to get a "permit form," then show up at your point of entry with two passport photos and $25 more... and voilà!

BUT, here's the thing... i'm sorry, what the flip are these people talking about?? how come everyone's got a different story here? am i supposed to bargain with immigration like i do the fruit lady at the market? and what to do when i show up at noi bai airport in ha noi and the ruddy-faced-and-intimidating-though-half-my-size contrôle starts shaking his head and barking at me in vietnamese??

this is what we should be covering in class!