My Epic Airport Nightmare

Okay. So the plan was to leave the Hanoi airport at 8:35 on a plane bound for Guangzhou, which connected to Beijing, and then from Beijing to DC, and then from DC to New York. 27 hours. Sounds fine. Sounds simple. So, so deceptively simple. So I arrive at the Hanoi airport at 6:30, ready to go. Lam comes with me because he's a good friend and wanted to see me off. I tried to get him not to come because it's so early to get up, but he was insistent and it turns out that it was the best thing that could possibly have happened, in these circumstances.

So I go to check in, expecting everything to be fine, and I have a hard time beliving it when the woman at the check in counter tells me that actually, to take a connecting flight from one airport in China to another requires a Chinese transit visa.

What.

So I can't take my flight.

I call my parents. They call United Airlines who confirm what we think: that to go through shouldn't require a visa because I'm catching a third flight out of the country and it's within 24 hours. Nevertheless. I talk to a representative from China Southern Airlines, who tries to be helpful and calls for me and tells me that, despite anything that makes sense, I still need a transit visa, and I shouldn't get on the plane because the Guangzhou airport can't guarantee that they can get one for me, and if they can't, I'd be shipped right back to Hanoi.

(Imagine this whole thing with me on and off the phone with my parents and Lam talking to various Airport people in Vietnamese, by the way – I could never have figured this mess out by myself.)

So I try to talk to the people who booked my flight over here, but their offices are closed. I go to the China Southern office to see if they can change my reservation to get me a new flight. It looks like they can't. My mom finds a possible new route through Thai airways leaving at 11:15 – Hanoi to Bangkok to Tokyo to San Francisco to New York. Okay. We go to the Thai Airlines office and find out that they don't sell tickets at the airport, and the ticketing office is 40 km away. We call the director of the Peace House who gets in contact with my father, and they decide to abandon the Thai plan and try to use the travel agent the Peace House usually deals with. The Thai Airlines people are nice and let us sit in their office. Meanwhile, my dad says that as a last resort we could possibly book with Air France and fly through Paris, so that by the end of my trip I'll have flown all the way around the world.

The only option seems to be getting a visa and doing the same Guangzhou-Beijing-DC-NY thing another day, so we head back over to China Southern. It turns out getting a visa is still no certain thing, and we don't know how long it will take, so they suggest taking a direct flight to Beijing, but the next one is on Friday morning. Please god, don't make me stay until Friday. I'm already here at the airport, I'm already ready to go. Come on, universe, cut me a break. I call my father and it turns out it would probably be easier to wait until Friday – I can fly from Beijing to DC and arrive in DC Friday night, and since I have to be in DC Saturday morning for a STAND conference, and my dad will be in DC on Friday to meet with the US Department of Energy, it would all work out nicely. Except for the fact that I won't be able to come home for another four days. But it looks like everything's worked out. So I hang up with my dad, and Lam and I trudge back outside to get a taxi to go back to the Peace House so that I can stay for another two nights before I actually leave.

I'm making my peace with it. I change some more dollars to dong so I have some money. Maybe tomorrow I can go see the Hai Ba Trung temple I never got to. We get a taxi for 200,000 VND, which isn's bad at all, and head away from the airport. Until my father calls me and tells me that actually, it would be more expensive somehow to switch my flights to Friday than it would to book the Air France thing today. So we tell the taxi to turn around and head back to the airport. When we get back, the taxi driver wants me to pay 150,000 VND - $9 – which is ridiculous because it's three-fourths of the price all the way back to Peace House and we were in the car for maybe ten minutes. He claims we went thirteen km. Uh huh, Sure. Apparently there's a higher charge for going two ways instead of just one way. Except that the two ways combined couldn't possibly be half the distance of going one way. Come on, people.

Lam argued with him for me for ten minutes or so – longer than we were in the car, probably – and I get really, really angry because, come on, can't something go right today? Please? And I offer him 100,000 just to leave us alone, but no, he won't back down. So eventually I just pay him because I feel bad that I'm making Lam argue for me, which isn't very fair to him, especially when he's been so incredibly helpful all day.

I go to the Air France office where I give them my confirmation number and for once, everything is fine, and the woman prints me a boarding pass, and I'm good to go, except for the fact that it's noon and my flight leaves at 7:45. But whatever. Doesn't matter. (Funnily enough, when I explained my situation to the woman there, she looked up airline policy and agreed that no, I shouldn't need a visa since I'm catching a connecting flight to another country within 24 hours. What the hell, China?)

And everything is set. I take a deep breath. Hug Lam goodbye. Thank him, thank him, thank him. He leaves. I find a cafe place, get some food, get some ice cream, use the internet. And here I am now. Six hours to go until my flight – Hanoi to Bangkok to Paris to Kennedy, arriving home Thursday morning. I think I'll just stay here and tell them to keep the ice cream coming – I've got lots of dong to get rid of now. Everything's going to be all right. At least, let's hope so.

I can't wait to be home. Where are ruby slippers when you need them?