Today was quite unbelievable again as were the past few days. I hopped on the bus at 8:20AM that I paid for the evening before and in about 2 hours I was back at the border again. My anxiety was rising and the butterflies in my stomach were getting more active.

First I went to the friendly customs officers where I also (hopefully still) had my bike. I was served a tea again and yes, the bike was still there as I left it. And even though they looked at their watch and counted the days I was away they seemed to had had no problem whatsoever with the fact that I left it in their garage for 4 nights instead of previously agreed one. After studying the new documents that I brought with me they suggested that I should give the police a visit again. Here we go, the one visit I feared…

In light rain I was now walking towards the unsigned police building again. When I got to it there was a padlock on the door and nobody there. “This is a good sign.” I thought to myself as it suggested that I might need to deal with a different officer this time. That would be great! I asked around a bit but they either didn’t know or they pointed me back to the locked building.

Back in the customs building I was now waiting until 1PM as I was told for the police to turn up.

At half past twelve they told me that the police is now in their building so I walked there those about 400 meters again. When I entered the building and shouted “Hallo?” a policeman, different from the one I feared to see again, appeared in his underpants. I think he recognized me though and gestured clearly that he couldn’t help me and that I should leave. I did leave but I went back to the customs to ask them for help in a form of translation. The young customs officer whose English was probably the best of them all (yet still very far from good) went back with me.

Back in the police building the policeman uniformed himself this time and sat down with us. He clearly didn’t want to go over the guy who originally refused me (he is a widely known figure as I was continually discovering) and sent me to Tay Ninh again to get my certificate there from the traffic police! Who says that I haven’t been traveling enough lately… ;-]

So I added a few things I was missing very much the last days in Saigon into my very space restricted lugage and after a bit of wait I secured a motorbike with a driver to take me to Tay Ninh for USD3. So the following two hours I again had “fun” on the hard pillion seat of an old HONDA Dream 110. I can still feel my bottom, back and shoulders from the uncomfortable ride.

At the traffic police in Tay Ninh I saw again what I had seen too often lately – big discussions about what to do with me as nobody seemed to know again. At the end of it I was sat on a bike and a young un-uniformed policeman was taking me somewhere. When we pulled up at Immigration Office – a place I have too visited once before – I immediately told him that these people couldn’t help me as I really need the police to issue the certificate for my motorbike. We went in regardless and sure enough, after another examination of all my documents we were about to leave for some other place with reassurance that they have now solved my problem. The policeman wouldn't take me on his bike now as “my” driver from the border obviously followed us from the police station where I left him and wanted to drive me again. I could not believe my own eyes when we turned up at the very same police station again where the young policeman arrived just a minute before us. They really seem to keep together here in the respect of letting any Vietnamese person to make same money from foreigners. I was experiencing this again and again the more days I was staying in Vietnam.

After a while there were about 6 people talking to me. And the result after another almost two hours? I was to go back to Moc Bai (the border) and meet Mr. Ming – the one policeman I didn’t want to meet again and was trying to get around for the past 5 days! I felt like they were now playing ping-pong with me where I was the ball. When I objected that I couldn’t’ run around like this all the time and that they sent me here today from Moc Bai this decision was temporarily changed to visit them again on Monday (it is Saturday today). However, this was subsequently changed again to the original visit of Mr. Minh in Moc Bai. This time they apparently called him and he will be there tomorrow morning “just for me to help me” as I was assured several times. I just somehow couldn't persuade myself to think, however, that dear Mr. Minh miraculously transformed to Mr. Nice Guy during the past few days. :-{ Or will I be surprised? No, I really don’t think so. As I see it my only chance is a bribe that I, probably thanks to my inexperience in this area, unsuccessfully offered the last time we met. I will have to try different approach and different amount I guess…

In fact, I’m not even sure that Mr. Minh is really going to be there tomorrow. I suspect that I was told this only to give the driver who drove me here yet another job taking me back.

I had the driver to take me back to the Immigration Office as I thought it was there where they didn’t return to me the paper with all the contacts I gathered so far. Unfortunately they were closed already.  

After that I directed the driver towards the guesthouse where I stayed the first night I spent in Tay Ninh. The guesthouse is in a side street close to a hotel on the main street and I wanted to make the driver to think that I was staying in the hotel. Why? Because I didn’t feel comfortable about him knowing exactly where I stayed as he was a bit of a stalker. I sent him back a few times today and he never went. I don’t like people stalking me. So now we were in front of the hotel, only on the other side of the street and what do you think? He wouldn’t leave! So I went to a shop along the main street and pretended shopping even though I had no money for that. It took him only a few seconds to be there with me. I kept telling him to go away and that we would meet in front of the hotel tomorrow at 7AM, which we agreed on before, but he just wouldn’t leave. So I sat down on a bench in front of the shop and waited. He joined me instantly so there we were sitting on a bench together and just staring on the road in front of us. Then he got up and bought himself and (surprisingly) me and ice cream. When we finished it he wanted to take me to the hotel. I told him that I could still walk those 30 meters it was to the hotel and that he should go home. After a while he finally did and I could go to my guesthouse in peace. Well, I guess he was just worried that I would not turn up the next day morning so he wanted to be sure where I stayed, but still, it was very annoying.