Travelling, and not well

The first day of my holiday was all about travelling, and it's safe to say that it did not go well. Or, at least, it did not go smoothly. No danger, no health concerns, just a litany of poor planning and organisation on my part manifesting as stressful delays at every step.

It started with me getting pretty anxious when I couldn't find my passport at home! I thought that I had it in a secure, known place, along with other important documents. Not so, it turns out! I turned my apartment upside down looking for the damn thing. Finally found it when I looked in the backpack that I'd last travelled with that had spent the intervening period in my cage in the basement - a known insecure location and not where I thought I'd have ever left my passport. Crisis averted, but not before working up a pretty good head of anxiety.

Got a taxi to the airport in plenty of time but discovered as we were travelling there that I didn't have my watch on. What the...? I decided immediately that I didn't need my watch to travel so just pressed on but worked on re-igniting the anxiety levels because I simply couldn't remember when/where I'd taken the damn thing off. (I've since worked it out, but I wasn't happy about it at the time.)

Get to the airport to be reminded by the check-in staff that I need a visa to travel to Vietnam. A visa that my travel agent advised me of several times from when we first booked the trip. A visa that I had stoically forgotten to acquire! It goes without saying, the blood pressure started to rise again. I checked online and one can (allegedly) acquire a visa for Vietnam "super urgent" in 30 minutes to four hours. Excellent! Problem solved. I applied for the visa and paid the money, then showed the check-in staff that the order had been received and they allowed me to board in good faith. I expected to receive the email notification of my visa being issued while I was in flight to Singapore and be good to go. Yeah, not so much, as it turns out.

The Gate in Changai, where I spent my time.

Had a three hour layover in Singapore airport. Constant monitoring of my email to check on the visa issue. Didn't come through! Of course, I had to check my junk mail and the "non-focused" mail boxes (I realised over time) and found some commentary, but nothing that said: "Here's your visa, Dr Turner."

I arrived at Ha Noi airport still in hope that I'd get the important email. No such luck. So, I hit the immigration barriers and bounced, politely escorted over to the Immigration visa issuing desk where I was politely but firmly told that it takes three days to process a visa, the people online cannot do it as fast as they claim, and I'll have to return to Singapore to await the issue of my visa! Anxiety levels started to increase again, of course. I asked the immigration officer if there was any way that I could get a visa here and now as I didn't have accommodation in Singapore for three days, but I did have it here in Hanoi. After a bit of backwards and forwards, he called over another fellow (not in uniform) who said that I could be issued an emergency visa by the government for USD160. That would be immediate. Ok, I said, let's do that. Sure, he said, but you'll have to wait for two hours as the relevant part of the government has a lunch break between Noon and 2 PM (we were talking at 11:50+ AM local). Sure, I said. I'll just sit right here and we can do that business when the people are back.

So, I sat in Ha Noi airport for what turned out to be nearly three hours watching plane loads of people be issued visas at the gate. Don't know their story. Perhaps they applied online and picked up the document at the gate. But there were others filling out paper forms and being given visas right there (pictured)!

In the meantime, I'm in email communication with the online folks having a weird conversation about whether they are going to issue the visa that I've ordered or not. They didn't seem to believe that I'd got to Hanoi without the visa and seemed to be confused about whether I wanted the thing or not as a consequence of me having got that far. The biggest irony of that conversation was that literally at the same time that I sent them an email saying: order the visa (for a 4 PM issue, apparently), the guy who'd said he'd help me get an emergency visa showed up out-of-the-blue to take my picture and collect the money: he'd got me a visa! I immediately sent another email to the online people saying: STOP! but the whole conversation with them had been desparately stilted because the free wifi in the airport I was relying on was horribly inconsistent, so the conversation was very asynchronous. Of course, they had ordered the visa too! Anyway, they agreed to refund part of the cost that I'd paid them for other services (issue within 4 hours, for example) but I believe that I now have two visas to be in Vietnam for the next 30 days.

The drive in to the hotel (in the old quarter of Ha Noi) was very interesting and I'm very glad I paid someone to do it. The freeway was straightforward, but once you get into the city, the traffic is typical of big, Asian, cities - cars, trucks, and scooters everywhere and road rules are treated as guidance when considered at all. Not dangerous because it's just not moving very quickly, but confusing and noisy and not for the faint-hearted. I did like the sight-seeing on the way in. Especially in the city there's some really lovely architecture and vistas strewn amongst the typical large, urban Asian city.

I've arrived at my hotel, tired (slept poorly on the plane, as expected), coming down from high anxiety levels, it's 35 degrees and feels like 80%+ humidity, and aching to just have a shower, a quick bite to eat and then head to bed. So, that's what I'm going to do.