So that day has come for me like it does for so many other expats that live in Vietnam with tourist visas. For reasons that have always eluded me, Vietnam forces the people that are living here to leave the country only to turn around right away and come back the same day.
It is not secret to the government what we are doing and ate least up to this point (thankfully) they don’t really seem to care how many of these you do in a row. I simply cannot understand why a country that thrives to some degree on the expat population living in it doesn’t give that part of the population an option to simply stay as long as they want to and pay a fee for the pleasure of doing so.
I know I speak for just about everyone else that lives as I do that we would gladly pay $100 a month just to be able to renew our visas in the country. But somewhere a long time ago someone decided that visas must be issued outside of the country and not inside of it. This has been the case in the 4 other countries that I have lived in as well. The government is extremely aware of the fact that you are simply going to turn around on that flight or bus and come straight back into the country, yet they force you to go through the process anyway. The visa cost is only $25 so in my mind, they are losing a lot of potential income by not offering us the ability to simply “pay to stay,” which most of us would gladly do.
My started at 7:30, which for a lot of you is probably just the way that you live every day of your life but I live a bit differently. As a night owl of sorts, any time of day before 9am is considered too early by my standards. I do not have a traditional job so I don’t really have to wake up any time at all. The only exception to this is when I have to catch a flight.
So even though they tell you that you need to get to the airport 3 hours before an international flight, it is extremely well-known that this is not at all necessary in DaNang. I got to the airport an hour and 15 minutes before my flight’s departure and by the time I went through ticketing, immigration, and security, I still had half an hour of sitting around waiting to get on the flight.
Of course the frantic idiots of the world rush the gate as soon as the announcement is made that people can board and this is something that always annoys me. There is ZERO benefit to getting on the plane first seeing as how all of our seats are pre-assigned. I am normally one of the last people to get on any plane that I am ever getting on, and guess what? I still end up sitting in exactly the same place I would have sat if I had been the first person in line. It’s just so stupid how some people behave.
Lucky for me, and perhaps it has to do with the fact that as a westerner I am significantly larger than the average South East Asian, I ended up in an exit row all on my own with plenty of leg room and no “neighbors” fighting for the armrest.
The flight was fine and the only thing that annoyed me was the constant yammering on the part of the flight staff who seem to need to make an announcement to us every 8 minutes or so. Since I will normally read a book on planes, this really irritates me. Most of the stuff they say to us is some irrelevant shit like how much tobacco you are allowed to bring into a country or how to use a seat belt. If you haven’t figured out how to use a seat belt by now…..
So of course when we land the same sort of people that rushed the gate when we were getting on the plane are rushing to get off the plane, despite the fact that we hadn’t even connected with the jetway and the door wasn’t even open yet. A particular nationality that I will not name is particularly guilty of this and they had to be reminded by the flight staff to “sit the fuck down” about a dozen times. This is another aspect of flying frenzy that I do not get, there is only one exit and seriously, what’s the rush? If you were late for a connecting flight or something like that the airline staff would assist you with that anyway, so there is literally no reason for this sort of behavior.
When I got to immigration in Bangkok I experienced something that I have never seen in the near 20 years I have spent living in SE Asia. There was almost nobody in line at all and I didn’t have to wait. I wasn’t even sure if I was in the right place because I went straight to the front. Then something magical happened when the immigration official was actually POLITE. This almost never happens in any country that I have ever been to, including my own. This woman was kind, smiled, and said “have a nice trip!” when I was done getting my stamp. I have grown accustomed to being grilled for how long I am going to stay and what I am doing in their country so this was an absolute delight.
This speed in getting through is a bit of a double edged sword though because now I have 4 hours to kill before my flight back to Vietnam. I already went to the food court and was a bit disappointed that there was no Taco Bell in this Bangkok airport, so I had to settle for Subway, which is a guilty pleasure of mine that we do not have in Da Nang. I don’t know how much a foot-long sub costs in USA these days but mine was around $14 and this is the most expensive thing I have had to eat in quite some time.
It wasn't long ago that inflated airport prices didn't apply in Thailand, those days are well behind us
I now have so much time remaining before my flight back that I can’t even check in yet, not that it matters very much because on the other side of this airport… like through security… everything is exactly the same as it is on this side but just 20% more expensive. So maybe this is a good thing.
In a mere 6 hours or so I will be back in Da Nang with another 3 months ahead of me before I have to do this again. It’s a pain in the ass but this is just part of the deal if you want to live like I do.