Saturday, July 23rd, 2005...11:39 am
Last days in Hoi An?
The last few days have been crazy. Every day I would prepare myself to leave on the following day, and everyday I would decide that I justcan’t do it. I thought I’d leave for Nha Trang two days ago, but I’m still here, and now I know I’ll never get to see Nha Trang, Dalat or Ho Chi Min city (Saigon). I just don’t have any time left in Vietnam.
It has become a city wide effort to keep me here. My Hai-Au Hotel friends have been ringing all over to see how to settle this issue with the government, trying to search around the travel agencies in Hoi An to see if such a thing was ever successful. We’ve come up with so many unbelievable schemes that we were sure could work but every one of them collapsed as we faced the Vietnamese government officials. For example – we thought about going for a re-entry visa at the Lao border (Lao Bao), which is 7 hours away from here, hopefully without actually having to get a Lao Visa and cross the border (50$). Right now, my only last hope is Israeli Nir’s restaurant-owner rich-Vietnamese friend Uyen. I’ve actually volunteered to help her with the restaurant, which means I’ll be her waiter and leaflet-handing guy, if she would help me to somehow extend my VISA. I’m suppose to go back there this evening to see what’s up, if it doesn’t work out then I’ll probably need to leave tomorrow… Buddha knows where to… (“Yeah, right, you’re not fooling anyone”).
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