Last night's dinner at the Dong household was a fitting wrapup to our visit.
Today we packed up, Glenn had his last street vendor bahn mi sandwich, I got to send one last entry from the hotel WiFi and we headed for the airport.
This unsigned oil painting was on the wall in our room. I saw several painting studios where local artists were doing oil, or more likely acrylic, paintings from pictures. Some were very good.
We had a little excitement when I tried to go through the immigration line. I had earlier noticed at the Lao border crossing that my Vietnamese visa, which had been issued by the VN Embassy in Mexico City, had been issued with a typo in the valid dates. Instead of 15Jun2015 thru 15Jul2015 the days were both in 2016.
When I came into the country and out to Lao and back in nobody caught it but today I happened to have a sharp eyed agent who caught the mistake. He called his supervisor who took me to a special area where I waited. Finally, at the fourth level of supervisor, I found someone who had enough horsepower to ok my departure for Seattle. He cautioned me that I couldn't use that visa again and when I agreed he led me over to the security check and thence to the gate area.
So we'll be boarding in 20 minutes or so and twenty hours or so from now we'll be back in Seattle. Traveling east across the Date Line makes for a long day. It's about 1530 on Tuesday here and we still have about 25 hours of Tuesday ahead of us. Maybe I'll be able to sleep at least a few hours on the second leg.
It's been a great journey. Different from any other trip I've taken but definitely worth doing.
Today we packed up, Glenn had his last street vendor bahn mi sandwich, I got to send one last entry from the hotel WiFi and we headed for the airport.
This unsigned oil painting was on the wall in our room. I saw several painting studios where local artists were doing oil, or more likely acrylic, paintings from pictures. Some were very good.
We had a little excitement when I tried to go through the immigration line. I had earlier noticed at the Lao border crossing that my Vietnamese visa, which had been issued by the VN Embassy in Mexico City, had been issued with a typo in the valid dates. Instead of 15Jun2015 thru 15Jul2015 the days were both in 2016.
When I came into the country and out to Lao and back in nobody caught it but today I happened to have a sharp eyed agent who caught the mistake. He called his supervisor who took me to a special area where I waited. Finally, at the fourth level of supervisor, I found someone who had enough horsepower to ok my departure for Seattle. He cautioned me that I couldn't use that visa again and when I agreed he led me over to the security check and thence to the gate area.
So we'll be boarding in 20 minutes or so and twenty hours or so from now we'll be back in Seattle. Traveling east across the Date Line makes for a long day. It's about 1530 on Tuesday here and we still have about 25 hours of Tuesday ahead of us. Maybe I'll be able to sleep at least a few hours on the second leg.
It's been a great journey. Different from any other trip I've taken but definitely worth doing.
posted from Bloggeroid
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