Another visa problem, or what were we thinking?

Today started out well enough, if early. We were up by five for a 6:00 a.m. ride to the Krabi airport, which took only about half an hour, due to the early time of day. Once we got there, however, things started to go south. We went to the Air Asia counter with our bags, and all our documents in hand. The agent told us that our visa was no good, because we had already entered into Vietnam previously. I pointed out to him that it states right on the paper that it is a multiple entry visa, something that we paid extra for. He just kept saying that it was out of his hands, that the person he was texting with from immigration said that it was no good and that we would have to apply for a new visa (something that can take a week or more). Going through our heads at that point was, “what do we do now?” Are we going to have to go somewhere else in Thailand, maybe Bangkok, and book new flights back to the U.S.? Will we lose all that money we spent on tickets on Qatar Air in business class? We are supposed to leave in five days from Saigon. The Thai ticket agent was offering no solutions whatsoever. We had no idea which way to turn.


He finally said that we could see his supervisor in another area of the airport. By then, we were wondering whether we could even make the flight if we got this straightened out. We talked to one lady, who was basically non-responsive. Then she passed us on to another woman, who evidently got back in contact with immigration in Vietnam and then just said, “OK, you’re fine, go back to the ticket agent.” Fortunately, this lady figured out that he simply had read the visa wording incorrectly, and she sent us back to him. He rather sheepishly handed over our boarding passes. The whole thing made no sense. We wondered if we would ever see our bags again, as he had already tagged them and taken them. In the end, we did make the flight. 

 There is no way to get directly from Krabi, Thailand, to Hoi An, Vietnam, our destination. You have to fly to Kuala Lumpur, then on to Danang, then get a ride. All in all, a looong day. However, at the end of it we actually got our luggage, found that the hotel we booked was lovely, and we went down to the river and watched the colorfully lit up boats go up and down the river, while having a very good dinner on a small boat that was moored by the edge of the river, and are currently enjoying the breeze on our balcony overlooking the pool.

If there is any reason to not do a trip like this, it is dealing with the messes at the airports, dealing with immigration and such. Our documents were checked over and over at every stage, we were fingerprinted and photographed at every turn, passport in hand all the time. On the day we left Saigon for Phuket, John figured out that we spent five
and a half hours just standing in line with hundreds of other people. If you really want to test your resilience, try a trip to Vietnam.