Something that should have taken about 1 hour to do, has finally been completed after about 2 weeks. I don’t know why it became such an ordeal to get the visa, but at least it’s over.

Back in September when I first decided to go to Vietnam, I knew that I was going to have to get a visa, but I thought that I’d have time, so I ended up procrastinating until about 3 weeks ago. I headed to the consulate here in Dubai only to find out that it had been closed and the only Vietnamese consulate in the UAE was in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is about 100 miles away, and it costs 500Dhs to hire a taxi for a round trip. That seemed high to me so I decided that I would rent a car instead, but I had to get my UAE drivers license first. So I did that, and then tried to find a car rental place that wasn’t too expensive, found one. So I called them up and they told me that I needed to come in to fill out the paperwork. They told me that they’d send me a map via email. I waited a couple of hours, no map, so I called them again and they said that they’d get one to me asap. No map arrived, the next day still no map, then I called them again, and gave them a hard time about it. So they sent me a map again… this time it was corrupted, so I called them again and they sent a new one… this one was corrupted as well. Then during December there are holiday’s, there was one last Tuesday, and then on from Sunday to Wednesday… Anyway, during the holiday I decided that I would just pay for the taxi and go to Abu Dhabi this morning.

The whole process of obtaining the actual visa took 15 minutes. No lie… 15 minutes. I’m just glad that I have it and as far as I can tell I’m good to go for my vacation in 8 days.