Accidental Passport Woes in My Tho

      Dear Passport, it would have been nice if I had remembered you

           After months of planning, the time came for us to head out to where we would be conducting the research. I was so excited to see first-hand the projects I’ve been learning so much about and to meet the people in the communities who either received full houses or home-repairs through Habitat. Our research took us to a city along the Mekong Delta called My Tho (pronounced something like ‘Mi Tha’) in Tien Giang (pronounced something like ‘Tien Ziang’). Unfortunately, after driving two hours and arriving at our hotel, I realized that I forgot my passport back in Ho Chi Minh City, and even with copies of it, I was told I couldn’t check-in. We had a meeting with the local government authorities to attend soon after we arrived, and hoped we’d have a better chance that I could stay without it. However, we resolved before leaving that if their answer was ‘no’, I would take a bus to the city and back to pick it up…As I dreaded, I was told I couldn’t stay without it and had to make my way back to the city alone—seeing my supervisor and co-worker on the trip had to stay to ensure things ran smoothly. I was not looking forward to this especially after a conversation about the multiple buses I would have to take and transfers that needed to be made. Anxiety was in high gear and I left the government office with several pieces of paper that detailed all the steps I needed to take, complete with questions written in Vietnamese such as ‘Where do I take the express bus from District 6 to District 10?’ 

The steps: My Tho-HCMC-My Tho complete with questions in Vietnamese( to the top)

            The heat was sweltering as I waited at the small Mai Linh Bus station in My Tho, and the bus arrived 30 minutes behind ‘schedule’.  They provided all of us with bottles of water and pre-packed refreshing wipes. I was secretly wishing that snacks would magically appear from the container, as I forgot all of my snacks in my bag that I left at the hotel will my co-workers. I had with me an abundance of citrus fruit—oranges and tangerines given to me by one of the local authorities as I left. Considering— thanks to food-allergies my bodies low tolerance to anything highly acidic, I thought it best that now is not the time to experiment with eating oranges fruits for the first time in over two years. I managed to sleep for most of the ride for my first leg of the journey, and once arriving to District 6, I had to heavily rely on bus conductors pointing me in numerous directions. There wasn’t very much English happening besides ‘Yes’, ‘Wait’ or ‘Go, that one’—waving in a vague direction to a sea of buses. I found the Express Bus to take to District 10, where I the needed to by my ticket back to My Tho, but before hailing a taxi to go back to my place to pick up my passport. 

 Bus Ticket & Bus Transfers which I mostly did not understand

            After retrieving my passport I thought it best to grab a quick lunch and make it back to the station, as I was given conflicting times about when the bus would leave. I was first told the schedule said 3:30pm, but then it was written down as 2:30pm on the ticket. I got there around 2pm, and I didn’t sit long before a bus came and was put on the bus. Now, I was told that unlike the multiple transfers like last time, I would just need to get on the bus which left from District 10 and it would be a straight journey to My Tho. Within 15 minutes, I found myself back at District 6, everyone had to get off the bus, and ended up being told to ‘Come’ and ‘Sit here’ in front of the bus I needed to take company’s desk waiting over 30 minutes.

 Some of the sights as I sat waiting in front of the Mai-Linh Bus/Taxi kiosk

           Situations like these I can tolerate a lot more when I have company. Being on my own, that’s a whole different story. Not having a clue what was happening, when I would actually leave, wondering if I got the right bus ticket in the first place; disgusted by the strong waft of urine that greeted my every time the wind-blew and having a group of men smoke around me was albeit too much. It didn’t help that I was obviously a rare sighting as several persons would walk by, backtrack and stop and stare. If a song were to play out of thin-air like it does on TV, the song would be from ‘One of these Things is not like the other’ from Sesame Street. Eventually, I was told to ‘Come, follow’ and was lead past some vendors along the back of a long row of parked buses. I was pointed to the one I was supposed to take, and seeing all of them are the same colour, I tried to confirm this was it asking the man who led me there ‘MY THO? MY THO?’ and then the two ladies who sat beside me. We waited for close to an hour before we left, and without knowing when, I fell asleep. I’m grateful that the bus driver made it a point to wake me up 5 minutes before my stop in My Tho, as this bus was making its way to multiple-destinations.

            I called the others to let them know I made it back to My Tho and to see if they were already back at the hotel.  Once I found out they were there and finished with interviews for the day, I took a taxi compliments of Mai Linh back to our hotel. My mistake of forgetting my passport resulted in 6+ hours of travel time back and forth. I returned tired, in a deplorable mood and fully embodied the phrase ‘a hot mess’. After a quick rest, I joined the rest for dinner and my mood was soon lifted thanks to good conversation and laughs. While I would not want to repeat this experience, I can definitely say I can file this one down as one of my ‘unforgettable’ travel moments. I was glad that amongst what little I did have with me in my backpack, I found my journal. Printed with the words ‘Embrace Possibility. Live Your Dream’ and a slightly toned-down lime-green colour, recently I have mostly been unmotivated to write in it. I was grateful to have it in that moment to able to document my reactions to the experience in the moment and capture the sights and sounds as vividly as I could.