International Crisis Averted
I leave on Wednesday for a trip across the world to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Friend C is already there, and Friend A will join us this weekend. Fun should be had by all.

That is, now that I've narrowly escaped a major international incident that was nearly diastrous for my trip.

I originally planned to get my visa for Vietnam while in Bangkok with Friend C, but she decided that I would not have enough days to successfully aquire the visa. So, I had to scramble to get the visa here in the States before I leave.

This involved sending my passport away to the Embassy of Vietnam in Washington DC. Something which I wasn't too thrilled to do, especially without much time left to get the passport back in my hands in time to board my plane.

I sent off the passport, hoping I had followed all of the instructions correctly. And then, I waited.

It takes 5 busines days to get the visa, or 2 business days to get an expedited visa. I decided to gamble and go with 5 days to save some money, and hope that since I had a buffer of a few days, all would be well.

I waited. 5 business days and no passport.

Naturally I assumed that I had done something wrong. I hadn't sent enough money, or I forgot to fill in something on the application, or they didn't believe that the passport photo I sent was recent enough (I think it's several years old), or I put the wrong address, or they hate skinny white girls trying to go to Vietnam for no good reason except to have fun. I tcould have been any number of ridiculous things running through my head as to why Vietnam had confiscated my passport, forcing me to go into hiding to escape the army of little vietnamese women they would send after me because of whatever I had done wrong.

Then, the weekend. There is nothing I can do about it over the weekend, so this meant I had all weekend to worry about it. But I finally put in the tracking numbers of the Fed Ex slips to see where my passport might be. I learned that it had been delivered overnight to the Embassy. But it had not been shipped back to me, yet.

This sent me into immediate panic. But, quiet panic. When stressed, The Cynical Tyrant tends to get even more quiet than I usually am. I also have bad dreams and lose a lot of sleep.

I didn't sleep much this weekend. I had two dreams that my passport arrived without a problem, on time. I had one horrible dream that the passport didn't make it back in time for my flight. The bad dream stuck in my mind all weekend.

This morning I began calling the Embassy in DC as early as I could. If the passport hadn't shipped, yet, I needed to convince the Vietnam Embassy that it is vitally important that they ship it to me right away, so that I would get it by tomorrow, and make it to my flight Wednesday morning.

I anticipated this to be a problem for severalfold reasons:
1. When I called the Vietnam Embassy to get the fees for the visa, the person I spoke with spoke very little english back to me. I figure my whining on the phone now would not translate well into vietnamese.

2. Why would Random Vietnam Embassy Person have pity on me when I could have spent the extra $20 for expedited service, which would have brought my passport back to me last week, within 2 business days?

3. As I began calling the Embassy this morning, I kept getting a busy signal, then no answer, then a busy signal, then no answer, and so on. I naturally assumed this meant that the Embassy had ceased to exist over the weekend, and they had disappeared with my passport that I would never see again. If I couldn't get ahold of them, I would not be able to explain my desperate need for my passport before Wednesday.

By this point I was super stressed and fairly certain I would not be boarding my plane on Wednesday. Plus, my co-workers are in on the whole story, so they kept asking if I'd gotten my passport, yet. Which made me panic even more. I began wondering what to do with an international (and not cheap) plane ticket, but no passport which would allow me to actually get on the plane. Certainly that would not be a good situation. And I began congratulating myself once again for being an idiot and not going with the expedited service that would have been more expensive, but would have saved me from several heart attacks and a fear of not flying.

Finally, I got through to the Embassy, and was rewarded with a conversation with a Vietnamese woman who did not speak much english. It was probably the same woman I talked to before.

Eventually I communicated to her my birthdate, first and last name, and that I needed to know the status of my visa and passport.

She said they had sent it back to me on Friday.

I asked if she was sure, because I had checked the tracking and it said that it had not shipped, yet. She gave me the tracking number (oops, it seemed I had written it down wrong in the first place....). I said thanks.

I walked back to my desk and put in the correct tracking number on the Fed Ex website. Sure enough, my passport had shipped Friday. Had I known this before the weekend (meaning I would have needed to write down the tracking number correctly to know this pertinent tracking information), I would not have freaked out about not knowing the whereabouts of my passport all weekend.

About five minutes after getting off the phone with the Embassy, the receptionist called to tell me I had a Fed-Ex... which I found to contain my passport.

Crisis and international incident averted.

God bless the Vietnam Embassy and Fed-Ex, without which I might never make it on my plane on Wednesday.

C.T.