I wandered into the airport, got the passport stamped out of Indonesia, checked in and received my boarding pass and was soon flying to Kuala Lumpur. The 3 1/2 hour flight went quickly and I got lost in music, something which I have not done in many months, scrolling through the photos I have made not only on this trip but also from the ones made in 2012, comparing the same places with a 7 year gap pressed between the leaves. There was a 2 hour wait in Lumpur and I was startled to see the majority of females wearing head coverings. Arrived in Saigon without a problem, my seatmate was a middle aged Vietnamese woman who told me she now lives in China and she was returning to Vietnam to visit her sons. She was pleased to find out I was heading into Nha Trang because that is where she grew up, her "home town". She told me that her son ran a cafe called the Snow Panda in Nha Trang, and she pulled up pictures of it on her phone to show me and recommended I visit.
I was starting to feel winded when I got off the plane in Saigon and it did not help when I saw long snaking lines of people waiting at passport/immigration. From what I had read there was supposed to be a separate desk for the e-visa and I saw a side line for "visa application" which I interpreted to either mean applying for a visa for the unprepared people who showed up in Vietnam without one, or where one shows the e-visa printout and is granted a visa. I was not sure which one it could be and to guess wrong would add perhaps an hour to trying to get to the other side of the airport. I asked a European-looking guy in front of me if this was the line for people who had an e-visa printout and he looked at me like I had two heads and did not say a word, then an Asian fellow next to him said "e-visa, yes, right line", so I waited 30 minutes and when I was getting close to the front of the line I was watching the 20-30 people sitting off to the side, apparently waiting for visa approval which made me think that I was in the wrong line since I had already paid for my visa and these people when their names were called were forking over $25 US dollars. I passed a white guy who had a USA accent and when I heard that he was from New York I tapped him on the shoulder and asked if this was the e-visa line and he said "unfortunately yes" so I felt the odds of my having chosen correctly had gone up but when I reached the window the man looked at my e-visa printout with eyes askew and said "wrong line, go over there" and I looked over there and and it was a longer line than the one I had just waited 45 minutes in, so by this time I was thinking back to my first arrival in Bangkok in 2012 when I had a similar experience of being continually rejected and having to fill and refill paperwork. What I was smiling about though is I have further developed my ability to cultivate positive energy in the midst of negative karma and so I just follow one of the goals of this trip, the final of 8 - Let Go - so I stood in line patiently, even letting go of the concern of missing my 8:00pm flight to Nha Trang and when I reached the front of the line after waiting a further 30 minutes I was convinced I was going to be rejected and told to go somewhere else and the officer gave me a glare and was speaking in Vietnamese and I wondered was he talking to me but I said nothing expecting him to point his finger but instead I heard the wonderful click clack and my visa got the stamp of approval and I was now officially in Vietnam and by this time my head was droopy due to low blood sugar due to not having eaten anything for the day but I still had a few tasks to complete, the first one being to find an atm machine and try spinning the bank roulette wheel to see if it landed on 00 like it did in Indonesia, but my luck was holding and I was able to score 3,000,000d and then due to low brain functioning I could not calculate in my head if 3,000,000d was going to last more than a day or two so I took out my laptop and turned it on so that I could use the calculator and I was surprised to see that 3,000,000d is equivalent to $129 while my in-head calculation had it at $50. I was going to do a second withdrawal for 8,000,000d but that would would have been a mistake because I would have gotten stuck with dong money on my way out of Vietnam but at the last moment clarity prevailed and I knew I was not thinking clearly so I canceled the transaction, thank goodness.
I now had to find the domestic terminal to catch my 8:00pm flight to Nha Trang, and I wandered to gate 21 and sat down and dozed off for a few minutes and then I saw three cafes but the tables were filled and I did not want to have to navigate paying in dong for the first time while under the influence of a tired mind. I saw a gift shop in the distance and decided to buy a bread roll and a package of wafer cookies along with a small can of pineapple juice, and within 30 minutes of consuming all three I felt more lively and clear headed and soon after was flying to Nha Trang and when the plane landed I knew getting out of the airport was going to be easy because I had already cleared immigration back in Saigon but the choice which I had to confront was whether to take a taxi for 400,000d ($17.50) or try to locate a bus which supposedly took one to the old Nha Trang airport and from there take a short taxi ride. The bus idea seemed a bit risky but by this point of my four month journey I am beginning to embrace "safe risk" with an ever widening latitude due to my increased confidence not in myself but in the spirit of things which I sense comes closer the closer I get to the edge of danger and the trick is not to go too far out too fast because then the spirit won't have time to catch up and then one is left to hang in the air without a strong supporting hand. As I walked out of the airport I saw the bus stand and recognized the bus ticket woman from the you tube video I had watched a couple of days ago of someone buying the bus ticket and so I decided to take the risk of a night time bus ride into an unknown city because my day had gone by so slowly, and yet covered so much distance, and I sensed the spirit was intrigued by what I was doing and so tagging along to give me a hand should I need it. I paid 50,000d ($2.20) for the 25 mile ride into town, which is a staggering low sum, and when it appeared that we had reached the center of Nha Trang and I saw the only other European vacationers getting off I decided this would be better than getting off at an "old airport", I may even be close to my hotel for all I knew. So there I am standing in the middle of Nha Trang on a Friday night and there are party happy people and music and colored lights and just like so many other times when I am out on the edge of the unknown the hand approaches and guides me to where it wants me to go, and tonight the hand was attached to the handle bars of a bicycle tuk tuk, I locked eyes with the driver and he stopped, turned the bike around and I walked over to him and he spoke no English and I showed him my hand written notes of where I wanted to go and he nodded and pulled out a 100,000d ($4.40) note to indicate the cost of the ride and I wondered how far away am I from the hotel, what if this guy has to pedal 5 miles up a hill? I agreed to his price and as he drove up and down the street I was inhaling the warm air which was not as stifling and humid as Bali and so I was well prepared for this and I smiled as we slowly covered the ground and after three blocks he pointed and I thought that the guiding hand was having a laugh at my expense, that what I had agreed to was a three block pleasure ride for 100,000d and now I was going to have to get out and find a taxi with 4 wheels to get to my hotel but as I shook my head no, this is not it, the steady hand pointed ahead and I looked again and there it was, the Azura Hotel, the bus had dropped me three blocks from my hotel but due to my severe blindness of the new I had no way of finding it without the help of a guiding hand and I gladly paid the driver along with a tip of 20,000d to say thank you to the spirit who watches the solitary traveler and as I walked to the threshold of the hotel, tired, weary, hungry, I laughed at the irony of having paid $2.20 for a 25 mile bus trip and $5.25 for a three block tricycle ride.
