“Knock, knock… Marek!?”  “Oh, what’s happening, what is the time? Have I slept in?”…

For a long time I haven’t been so disoriented as I was this morning after David woke me up at 6AM. The whole family of theirs was already having morning drinks (I’m pretty sure they didn’t eat anything). I joined them just a few minutes later and David ordered some kind of drink for me too. Later we all hopped into their rented Mercedes minibus and headed to the traffic police headquarters.

David and I were stopped right at the entry gate. The young officers there wanted to se some prove that I really had a motorbike at the border as I claimed to have. As I didn’t have any direct prove of that fact we weren’t allowed to get in. We were referred to the immigration office across the street. From there they sent us to another police station in the city. However, there was another 11 people waiting for us in the minibus and so David suggested that they would take me with them to Ho Chi Minh City where he would get me a taxi to my Embassy, which he believed would sort this thing out easily. Even though I myself didn’t think they would be able to and would rather first go to the other police in the city I couldn’t make all these people to wait for me and so off we were for Saigon.

In Saigon we first went to have something to eat. Thanks to having the advice of natives handy I tried some more typical Vietnamese foods and a cocktail type drink made of some vegetable. I’ve never had a vegetable cocktail before. The taste was very interesting… :-) No really - it wasn’t too bad. As the day before for the dinner David refused to accept any money from me. I’ll have to make it up to him when I’m back in Oz.

At the Embassy the Vietnamese staff I talked to didn’t know what to do with me. I insisted that I needed their help so the girl made a few phone calls and came up with a couple of addresses for me to go to – immigration and what I thought was Ho Chi Minh City traffic police. First I was supposed to go to the Chief of Office at the traffic police. When I arrived there I found out that public office hours were from 1:30PM. Great! I had to wait there for over 2 hours. So I sat by a tree on the street and waited.

As I waited I realized that I had a pocket FM radio on me that I haven’t used much so far. In my search for some listenable stations I came across a broadcast in English. I learned that they were just celebrating 114 birthday of Ho Chi Minh. It was quite interesting to hear a communistic radio after so many years again. Of course there was the part saying that communism will ultimately lead to prosperity and happiness of all citizens. As I’m saying – interesting… ;-)

At about 1:15PM I was invited in through the gate by one of the guards. They took me into the nearest building and sat me in a “Citizen reception room” that was all furnished in beautiful wood and leather furniture. Couple of minutes later I was accompanied by a pretty female interpreter and a couple of other people in sequence, before they told me that I actually needed to talk to their boss who was not there at the time. They asked me to come back tomorrow. I explained that I would try to wait, as I needed to solve my problem urgently. Apparently it could be hours but I had no other choice anyway.

I only waited for about 30 minutes when the tiny interpreter girl came to inform me that she would now take me to the boss. That was good news. Unfortunately, after talking to the boss for a while I realized that this was not the right place to solve my problem. They are issuing driver licenses here, not the certificate for my bike that I needed! So this guy (quite nice and helpful person by the way) referred me further. From than on I was just being referred from office to office and from ministry to ministry, as nobody knew what to do with me. At the end of the day I ended up at the same place I started at – the traffic department where they issue driver licenses. So I went back to the director to ask for another advice as at that point I had nowhere else to go and nobody else to ask. After I explained more clearly who I actually needed to talk to  he told me to go back to the second last place I’ve been to today but he suggested to go to a different building there.

As I was waiting for some moto-taxi to come by the little interpreter girl approached me again to ask how it all went. I told her the story in short. She told me that it was too late by then to go where I needed to go next and arranged a moto-taxi for me to take me to a cheap guesthouse. She also secretly told me that I shouldn’t pay more than 5000 Dong for the ride.

The driver took me to a street full of guesthouses (XXXXXXX) and hotels (and therefore full of white people too). Immediately I had offers for accommodation. I accepted one for USD3 per night and was happy that I didn’t have to go anywhere else that day.

Later I did go for a walk around. Among other things I met a guy from Belgium – Lorance – in a CD & DVD shop and he invited me to join him and his two female roommates for a dinner or just a drink. Later that evening I met them and other guy and two girls and we went to a restaurant.

One funny story from the restaurant: As we were getting to know each other I asked where everybody was from. All, except Lorence, were either Dutch or English. I’ve already written about this before – I’m meeting almost solely Dutch or English travelers. As I was telling them about this observation of mine the English girl pointed out: “And Canadians.” I agreed as I met at least 3 Canadians myself. Not too long after this a group of 4 people (this time 1 girl and 3 guys) joined us in the room. As they were talking I overheard what was probably only a half of a sentence “… lots of Dutch people”. I started to laugh and explained to them that we were just talking about the same thing a while ago. “Oh, and by the way, where are you guys from?” I asked. “Oh us? We are Canadians.” was the reply. I burst into laughter again… :-)