Queen of making stupid and expensive travel errors

If you want to know about my least favorite country I’ve ever been to, here it is: Vietnam.I think what really made this country so awful for me is that Sarah and I had really high hopes for it and we were just met with disappointment after disappointment. I will go back to Vietnam, but I am in no hurry.

Our flight to Vietnam was scheduled to leave at 7 am, with Air Asia again, in KL Airport 2. We get a taxi from our hotel at 4:30 because there is no way we are going make the same mistake again and show up late. We arrive in a good amount of time and try to check in. Turns out you need a visa to get into Vietnam. I completely blame myself for not checking. I’m just so used to only needing a passport that it slipped my mind. I did run into this issue before when I was at the airport trying to leave to Australia, but thankfully that visa could be done within minutes online so it was never a problem. We had about 25 minutes to get a visa and check our bags in before the counter closed on us. We went online and started to do some research. I wanted to make sure whatever website we used was legit.

After a quick glance it was apparent we had really screwed up. Visas need to be applied for over two days in advance and if not, it is a pretty penny. Our time was ticking and we decided to go with govietnamvisa.com. We could either pay $238 each for the super speedy 15-minute visa approval or because it was Sunday $198 for a speedy out of normal work hours visa approval. I did not want to miss this flight, so we bit the bullet and paid the $238. Listen when I say this: it takes way more than 15 minutes. That shouldn’t have even have been an option. I’m quickly trying to fill out our information and when I finally send it out, they email back saying we need to reply back with our boarding passes, flight info, and passport pictures. Time was ticking and as you know we were not near Miracle River anymore. When they finally emailed us back with our approval letters, it was too late. We missed the flight.

We were beyond annoyed and pissed at ourselves. We just dropped over $200 on something that should have been $18 if we had planned correctly. We spent money on a flight we didn’t even get on. Next step was to find a new flight. They were all way more expensive than the original $30 one that we had missed. We lucked out and found one a little over $80 but of course, it wasn’t letting us buy it online and the airline counter was in the KL Airport 1. We had to pay for a train ticket to get over to the other airport, all the while the Vietnam visa company was bombarding us with emails asking if we got on the flight. We make it over to the airport and book a 2:25 pm flight with Malindo Air. We have to send the new flight information to the visa company. Finally, they approved it and we brought it to the ticket counter. They made us go print out the approval letter. After we pay to get it printed we see that I had accidentally marked my gender wrong. We have to email the visa company again asking them to fix the issue. They finally do. We have to pay to print it again. We turn it into the ticket counter and finally after so much time and stress we receive boarding passes to Vietnam!

What a morning it had been. We were going to have the whole day in Vietnam, now we were getting there after 3 pm, but at least we were getting there. While we were waiting by our gate the visa company emails again saying we have to print this other sheet out. To get to a printer we had to take a tram over to another terminal (just our luck, they couldn’t have a printer nearby). We were at the airport for over 8 hours. It was a nightmare. I was still excited for Vietnam though since we had some cool tours booked. I was just thankful that Vietnam is cheap so I could justify spending that much money to get there. Malindo is a way nicer airline than Air Asia. Our flight was only two hours and they gave us a meal, refreshments, and had movies on board. I was kind of sad we weren’t flying with them on the way back.

Once we arrived, the visa company still wasn’t done hassling us. Someone was there waiting for us and had us pay $5 more for pictures and $25 more to put the actual visa in our passport. I was not pleased. They had gotten us good.

I was pumped to be out of the airport and after we exchanged our currency, we started looking for a taxi to take us to our hotel. Vietnam doesn’t really use public transportation yet, so using taxis are your best bet, especially because it is so cheap in the country. I had read Vinasun was reliable taxi agency so I made a beeline for their signs. This guy with a Vinasun name tag asked me where to and led me out to this parking lot, where he then stuck us in a car with no taxi stickers and no meter in it. I was feeling uneasy but we had already gotten in the car so I was just hoping for the best. We had a psychopath for a driver. I am not exaggerating when I say he was yelling at us and grabbing our bags and then finally kicked us out. He wanted us to pay for the airport toll with small bills, but we only had big bills from just exchanging. 50,000 Vietnamese dong is like $2. Why would they make it so everything costs hundreds of thousands of dong? I have no idea. Seems pointless. Back to the driver – straight up grabbing our purses out of our hands and checking our bills. This fool was crazy, I really felt uneasy now and after yelling at him to leave our stuff alone I was so thankful he kicked us out and a different driver took us. This car still had no meter though so I wasn’t sure if we were getting ripped off. I didn’t know the conversion rate at that time so I was just praying he wasn’t charging us a stupid amount. After getting to the hotel and doing the math later, we learned he had charged us normal amount. So relieved.

I had let Sarah book the hotel. She picked a nicer one, Alagon Hotel and Spa and paid extra to use the pool Why would we use a pool when we are in Vietnam? We will be busy exploring. She also booked an extra night that we weren’t even using. WHAT? That’s why we were balling off a budget. We were literally just throwing our money away. Lesson learned: always check if a country needs a visa before going and always book trips yourself haha.

Since we no longer had time to do the stuff we had planned to do for the day, we decided to hit up our hotel’s spa. I remember loving the cheap massages in Thailand, so I was hoping it would be similar. Sarah only did a 40-minute foot massage, but I did a full body 60 minute one. I was disappointed. My guy was very rough and I told him twice to be gentler, but it was like he had forgotten that I had told him after a minute. Plus I was looking to get more of a relaxing massage instead of a deep tissue so I purposely didn’t pick the Thai massage when they told me that one was rougher. I wish it had been more of a rub than a kneading. I needed it though because that morning had left me stressed. When my masseuse cracked my back, it sounded like every vertebra cracked and he seemed pretty shocked.

We walked to a dinner spot after. Sarah had chicken nuggets as her first Vietnamese meal (boring) and I had shrimp stir-fry. We went to sleep early after that long day.