(Version française plus bas)

Yesterday I had the best day ever since our arrival in Ho Chi Minh City- except for our day trip to the Mekong river basin, of course! The day didn’t started so well since I had a job interview for a French teacher position, which turned out to be totally pointless because the school does not yet exist. (!)

But, my day will not have been completely useless. I decided to check out the outdoor public swimming pool. It was … heaven! Over lunch break- from noon until 1.30pm- we were only ten people in the pool. Even after school groups arrived, we still had a lot of room to swim and glide in the water. Oh, water! Rain! Sea! Ocean! I miss you so, very much!

Public outdoor swimming pool in Ho Chi Minh City

A few months back, my laptop decided that I no longer had the correct brand of power adapter and therefore it was no longer going to charge my battery. It will happily turn on when plugged in, but unless it’s sure my power adapter is a Dell (and it is), its going to guard access to my battery closer than a farmer guards his twin daughters. The only logical reason for this is that Dell brand power must be the electronic equivalent of sipping Cristal while generic brand power exists only to be chugged liberally by frat-laptops. Whatever the case may be, I decided to give replacing it a chance, so I had my family ship me the spare I’d left at home back in April. Yesterday, a man who only spoke Turkish came to our door and had Rob sign for a white slip of paper, also entirely in Turkish, that seemed to say that my package was somewhere within the city limits.

Here’s where the fun begins! Today, my boss had to meet with a customer for about an hour, so I figured I’d run out and pick it while he was gone. I dashed down to the bus stop and hopped on a Metro bus towards what I hopped was the right address. I was a little off, and needing to be quick, I hailed a cab who drove in what can only be described as large figure eights towards my destination, finally dropping me off at the cargo processing center. Once inside I showed the slip to a number of security guards who directed me to a long dingy looking hallway with 9 different numbered windows and a general atmosphere like a combination DMV/Hospital. I could detail each of the 6 separate lines I stood in and the 5 different documents I shuffled between windows, but it would take as long as the experience itself. In short, it was explained to me that any package with a declared value of over 100 Euros had to be picked up at this location so that a 10% customs tax could be assessed. Unfortunately my package had been declared as 105 Euros ($150 USD), so not only was it not delivered to my doorstep, I would have to pay 23 TL if I ever wanted to see my box again. Explaining that the contents of the box were barely worth 23 TL didn’t seem to matter much to them, and when I asked to speak to a customs agent I was just told: “You don’t need to talk to him”.  In the end I conceded defeat and paid the 23 TL customs fee and attempted to collect my package, only to be sent back to the first window to pay a 2 TL ‘service fee’ for the assessment of the customs fee!

Finally, two hours after leaving work, I walked out of the cargo office one package heavier and a total of 46 TL ($30 USD) lighter. Luckily my boss had a good sense of humor about it and didn’t mind me vanishing from the office for a good chunk of the day. The lesson learned here is that bureaucracy is alive and well at the PTT (Turkish Post Telegraph and Telephone) and you should always declare the value of your package under 100 Euros if you want to avoid a similar fate.

Join us again for Volume II, if and when the package that Brian had shipped out here over a month ago ever arrives!