It was 10pm just outside of Hanoi. My sister, Maulia, my friend, Jon and I were sat in a seatbelt-less Taxi speeding down a half built Highway on the way into Hanoi from the airport. The driver was threading through the multiple variety of cars, vans and lorries to get us to the hotel as soon as possible – dead or alive. It was at this moment that I realised, 7 hours ago, none of us had the correct Visa documents required to board the flight…
Sunday morning, a day before we were due to fly, the three of us managed to sit down at a café and agree the dates for our Vietnam trip. That night we were due to head to Kuala Selangor to see the fireflies and so we wanted to sort this issue out as soon as possible. As I hit the confirm button for the air tickets, a thought entered my head regarding Visa’s. Up until this point all the places I had visited required no additional documents other than the British Passport on arrival. When I checked for Vietnam it confirmed that the Visa we required was called Visa On Arrival, which made me feel at ease. That is until I noticed below that an Approval Letter was needed when we touched down in Hanoi. This letter could only be sent from the Vietnamese Embassy and would usually take three to four days. Bugger.
It was roughly around this point that I felt a sudden sense of dread and worry take over. Frantically checking the numerous websites advising on Vietnamese travel visa’s I found a singular lifeline in the form of an express Visa service. Trouble was that it was only open on Monday morning 10am, and we were due to fly at 6pm. Could they issue the letter before we left for the airport? We were about to find out. After submitting the forms we had nothing else to do except pray and hope that whoever dealt with our claim could process it within 6 hours.
The rest of the day was spent showing the tourists around KL’s usual sites and sounds including Petaling Street, Brickfields and Central Market. The evening was then spent at Kuala Selangor admiring the fireflies.
The following morning, I found myself constantly calling Vietnam speaking to “Steven” and begging him to make sure we received the letters. In the meantime I took the other two to a shopping centre and let them pass the time.
It was at 1pm that my phone alerted me to an email. The Approval letters had arrived. We were saved! Rushing back to the apartment, we grabbed our bags (optimistically already packed for the trip) and proceeded to print out the required documents. After that, it was smooth sailing as we headed to KLIA and boarded the tiny plane headed to Hanoi for three days.
Upon arrival, we proceeded to the Visa service kiosk and handed over all the hard fought documents. In return they issued us all a shiny new Visa in the back of the passport and let us enter the city.
And so, at the end of Monday we found ourselves safely arriving at the Hanoi Aurora Hotel after the manic taxi driver succeeded in not killing us. As we were about to enter the hotel, we spotted a guy on the side burning US one dollar bills. This was going to be an interesting trip…
