Vietnam Air and Other Adventures

I have been though customs in a Communist country before, and it is always interesting... It was my experience that at a Chinese boarder crossing, about 75% of those entering the country walk right past the armed guards and the metal detectors, not bothering to be bothered. No such luck in modern day Vietnam! Mind you, I was not immigrating, but merely changing planes on an one hour lay over.

I swear that none of the guards could have been older than twelve and none of them spoke English. Still, they enjoy a good round of intimidation… pawing through each and every page of every person’s passport, examining each and every stamp. When it was my turn, he glared at my address for three and a half minutes, before repeatedly examining my face and comparing it to my photo. The photo is, by the way, new and a drastic improvement over my previous mutant-ish image (I swear it appeared that I had one eye in the middle of my forehead).

BS and I landed in Seim Reap, Cambodia at around 7:00 pm on Friday (local time). No identifiable communist guards (this place is a democracy, of sorts…), but still plenty of red tape. We had to fill out three different forms and wait in line for a tourist visa. The first immigration official took our paperwork, passports and $20 US each and began the processing. At the large, rounded counter no less than 15 officials sat; each played a significant role in the processing of our paperwork. They slowly passed the passports down and 15 minutes later… Voila! just like magic we had them back with pretty new tourist visas pasted inside… too bad we still had another line to wait in…

A driver met us. Funny how a man has a sign with your name printed on it (or a name similar enough to your own as to convince you that he is looking for you) and you get into his car and drive off into the dark of the night on almost non-existent roads. What makes us trust these strangers, especially knowing that they know that we carry more cash than they will possibly make in the next 6 months? We have had more than one “this is where they take you before they kill and rob you” type moments, but so far we are still kicking and shopping and enjoying the heat! Most importantly, I am now confident that our driver will not, nor will he be a party to others chopping us up and feeding us to the crocodiles. At $25 dollars a day, Piop is like part of the family...

Wow! At 10 cents a minute, I better get off this darn computer!

PS Vietnam Air is passable, though some “standard” safety precautions were lacking… I always enjoy Asian airline food… always a bit risky, but there is where the excitement is to be found… We had two flights of two hours each and they tried to feed us two complete meals! I forced myself to be happy with just the one round of curry.