A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
I dove briefly into the pool of Vietnamese bureaucracy yesterday. After doing a little shopping around, I found a travel agency that would renew my visa for about half the price that the agencies in my neighborhood were quoting. Unfortunately, they could only renew it for a month, and I would really like to figure out how to get a reasonably priced 3-6 month multiple entry visa. So this time when I went up there I talked to the travel agency owner about it, who recommended that I go to the immigration department and hash it out with them directly. In retrospect, I suspect he did this to make the one-month thing look better to me and/or to convince me to pay him an arm and a leg for the 6 month visa.

It was a long walk in the sweltering early afternoon sun. When I arrived there were only a handful of people in the waiting area, a large, very depressing, dingy institutional space. There were no officials whatsoever at the six windows, though I could spy some sitting on the floor.

After reading all the signs (helpfully supplied in both Vietnamese and English), I determined that they were on their 11:30 am - 1:30 pm lunch break. This does seem a bit odd by our standards, but the Vietnamese do work crazy long hours with no weekends off in most cases so a 2 hour break for lunch may save their sanity. On the other hand, I very much doubt that these Immigration officials were really working the kind of hours that would justify the practice. In any event, despite the fact that the building was weakly air conditioned, I decided I couldn't take too much of that room without wanting to slit my wrists, so I headed out into the hot sun again to find a cafe to sit in for a while, preferably one in which I could sit under a fan. One great benefit of Saigon's restaurants and cafes is that they never, ever pressure you to leave, no matter how little you're spending.

The place had really filled up when I returned an hour later, with maybe 120 people there sitting patiently. When new ones arrived, they would head up to Window #1, the only one with a human presence upon my arrival at the designated hour. Unfortunately, this window was clearly described in the lengthy posted rules/regulations/instructions as being for Vietnamese only. I was to wait for Window #6, along with a bunch of Chinese girls and a couple Europeans. I amused myself by reading the rules and regulations -- no drunkenness, no belligerence, no impolite behavior, and many other specifically listed Sins Against Immigration Officials.

Window #6 was not manned at 1:30 as advertised. Nor was it manned at 1:40 or 1:50. At 2:05, a man came in, sat down, and began to actively ignore everyone in the room, emitting powerful "stay away from my window" vibrations to the patiently waiting foreigners. Since I'm pretty much immune to such unspoken messages, I caught his attention after some effort, but after about 2 seconds of looking at my current visa he told me to go see a travel agent about it. His English was not such that I could easily negotiate, and Arguing with the Official was clearly forbidden in the posted rules.

So after all that I ended up going back to the travel agent to get the one month tourist visa extension. I don't have time to deal with the complexities of changing my visa status at the moment as I need my passport back before my plane trip next week, but next month I'm definitely going to work this a little harder. Although I know I cannot defeat the Vietnamese bureaucracy, I'm very hopeful that I can finagle a way through it given enough time and determination.

© 2002 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 3:40 AM