Vietnam: Bribery and Drama

Picture 1 - Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam was the last destination that we wanted to visit, since we’ve heard so many horror stories of tourists (especially Vietnamese) visiting Vietnam. Even our parents were worried! It’s very ironic since I was born and raised in Vietnam. My family and I left the country since I was 10 years old.  Le was born in the US, so the Vietnamese culture was passed to him thru his Vietnamese parents and the Vietnamese community in the Cincinnati area. We do have an advantage since we can speak the language, have a general knowledge of the culture, and last of all, we love the food.

In our minds, Vietnam is known for bribery, frauds, and scams. Yes, we know it’s also common in other countries around the world, but it’s nerve wrecking since it seems to happened to every other Vietnamese that we knew. There’s no way, in our right minds, Vietnam will be in the top 5 destination in our bucket list…then a travel deal showed up. We hesitated at first, but it was just too good to turn down.

How bad could it be?

To access Vietnam, a visa is required and can be obtained through a Vietnamese embassy in the US ( San Francisco or Washington DC location). You can apply for it the traditional way, which is mailing in the application package.  It includes the application, your ORIGINAL passport, and a check. It could take 2-3 weeks process.  The other way, visa upon arrival, allowed you to apply online and pick up the visa once you have arrived to Vietnam. Ride pickup can also be arranged with certain online companies. Well, we didn’t like either option. With the traditional way, we didn’t like the idea of mailing our original passports to anywhere. It could get very complicated if our passports were lost in the mailing system. Visa upon arrival? We didn’t know if we could trust that our visas will be at Ho Chi Minh Airport once we get there. We would be stuck in a bind if somebody were able to “name the price”, in exchange for our visas at the airport. There were tourists who found themselves stranded at the airport, didn’t know which way to turn since the confirmation email was invalid.

We decided hire a reputable Southeast Asia visa specialist from California. The visas were in our hand within 1 week! It did cost us a bit more, but our peace of mind worth every penny.

At 11pm, we finally landed in Ho Chi Minh airport (south Vietnam) after 21 hours in the air. We strategically planned our sleeping pattern (sleeping in their time zone) to reduce the jetlagged time but it didn’t seem to work at all. We were very awake! 

The first thing that worried me the most was going thru custom in Vietnam. Many Vietnamese placed money inside the passport for a smoother process, as bribery. We refused to play this game, since we have nothing to hide. We put on our poker face and head over to the station.

“Why doesn’t the picture in the passport look like you?” the office asked Le.  The picture in the passport can be valid for 10 years. People look different when they are in their 30s versus in their 20s.  How were we supposed to prove this to him? I remember the last time I went back to Vietnam with my mother, they erased my middle name in my paperwork, somehow, and claimed that it didn’t match my visa or passport. My mother slipped some money into the passport for him, all of the sudden, the middle name was there again and everything was fine. It made me so frustrated, thinking about that.

"Maybe he couldn’t see your face completely, why don’t you take off your glasses so he can see you better?", I said loud enough to Le (without yelling) so the officer who was questioning Le could hear me also. Thankfully, he nodded and couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Our first obstacle was accomplished with ease, surprisingly!  

The luggage pickup area is the area where they make the most bribery money. Since many Vietnamese coming back to Vietnam, bring back many gifts for their family and friends, the airport gang will hide the luggage and ask for money if you wanted your luggage back. Worse, they would rip your luggage open and take whatever valuable items that you have and once your luggage get back to you, it will be ripped with useless packaging tapes all over your luggage.

We didn’t fall for that trick, of course. We’ve learned to pack efficiently to any country that we visit. For 3 weeks in Vietnam, we only had 2 backpacks on us. (There will be another blog on how we pack) We usually don’t have to wait in line for anything in the airport either. Since we didn’t bring any luggage, we didn’t have to wait to pick up our luggage and give them a chance to mess with us at all.

I have distance family who lived Ho Chi Minh city (10 minutes away from the airport). We were planning to rent a room somewhere close to them, but I figured we should do our duty to visit them at least one day since they haven’t seen me for 6 years, let alone Le, a new member to the family.

Just when we thought we hit home run at the exit of the airport, the next challenge already found us. My family wanted to greet us at the airport. I was so worried about planning the majority parts of the trip, I didn’t take the time to get the details where I would meet them at the airport! I didn’t have their phone number since I’ve been contacting thru Facebook messenger. I figured once I walked out of the gate, they will see us…but no, not as simple as I thought.

T-mobile has been our favorite phone provider for our travelling purpose, since they have connection with many countries around the world with no extra charge…but with our luck, Vietnam is not covered. So there we were, sitting in the airport, couldn’t call anybody, wi-fi connection was there but my family wasn’t on Facebook at the time, since most of them were in at the airport waiting for me. There’s a SIM card booth, but we didn’t have any Vietnamese currency (dong) on us! But even with the SIM card, who can we contact? Walking out of the gate, everybody look like everybody. It felt as though I was at a sold out concert, and to find one familiar face is impossible.

The second floor air-conditioned waiting area seems like a good idea since it was so hot and humid outside. Plus, we would have a better chance of spotting a familiar face in the crowd of the first floor. We had a plan. While Le was guarding our backpacks, I would run thru the 1^st and 2^nd floor every 15 minutes to see if I can find anybody, or maybe somebody will be find me! It did definitely beat sitting around and wait for someone to find us.

 “Ngoc, is that you?” a familiar voice and that’s definitely my name. It worked! Somebody found me while I was squirming thru the crowd! It was one of my uncles. We were packing up our stuffs so fast, you would think we were about to miss this ride home. My aunt waved down the taxi to take us home, even for her, they wanted to double the price. She thought it was hilarious since they were mistaking her for a foreign visitor. She walked us down to the bottom of the taxi line and called a taxi that will take us home for a more reasonable price. Our first bargaining lesson in Vietnam: never accept the first offer!

The taxi dropped us off in front of our place. In front of me was the house that I grew up in and everything looked so different. All the dirt alleys were paved and expanded! I remembered, every time it rains, the alley would get so flooded. My friends and I paddled around in our plastic buckets, pretending like we were racing in the river. They cut down the tree that I used to climb with the boys in the neighborhood. We were in so much trouble when our school uniforms were ripped from climbing.

It’s amazing how eight of my relatives can lived together, under one roof. Everybody just find a spot in the house to sleep, and in the morning, everybody has places to go. My parents had the hot water system installed in the bathroom for us, but it was so darn hot and humid, we took cold showers 3 times a day while in Vietnam. 

Below is one of the homemade dish that my family made for us. Would've missed it if we chose to stay in a hotel! 

Picture 2 - Homemade Vietnamese dish  - vermicelli noodle with fermented shrimps and papaya, thin slices of boiled pork belly, extremely spicy homemade fish sauce, and variety of different vegetables, cucumber and bean sprouts

Picture 3 -  individual dish presentation