Home and missing the babies!

December 5th, 2008 by Denis Brouzes

Louise and I are finally back in Ottawa. We had a few travel arrangements/changes that had to be done prior to leaving Da Nang. Our visa expiry date was Nov 30 and our departure date was Dec. 01, at 23:50, in Hanoi. Every one we talked too when trying to extend our visa said “no problems”. I had initially requested to have our visa to run too Dec 2 when we extended it but the Ministry wouldn’t do it; only 30 days & I was requesting 32 days basically.

Well, when the crunch came, I called the Ministry in Hanoi and they said no problem maybe a small fee, but that’s all (maybe $100.00 USD each). We were scheduled to take an overnight train from Da Nang to Hanoi, arrive in Hanoi at 07:00 AM on Dec 01 and taxi to airport for flight at 23:50. So I tried to change our train fare to Dec. 29 and arrive in Hanoi a day earlier & change international flight for 30/11. The Train folks wanted an additional 400,000 dongs and I wasn’t prepared to pay that amount. So I cashed the train fares for a bit less than 1 millions dongs and bought two air fares for 2 million dongs. So had to pay out an extra one million but we didn’t have to take the TGV (Total Great Vibrations) overnight train to Hanoi and that was worth that amount or more! (For those of you not familar with dongs…Vietnamese currency 16000 dongs=$1.00 USD)

The outcome, we traveled by plane to Hanoi on Nov 30, got standby seats our flight to Seoul but one day earlier and beat the visa issues. We managed to travel right up to Ottawa on standby. We had to pay a small fee for the change but we were please to exit Vietnam before our visa expired and not having to argue with the Custom guys who do not want to understand anything more than their point of view and a bit of cash. Lessons learned: when you travel & leave your home country, make sure you have a visa that covers the period you plan to be in that country. Extending your visa when you are in that country is a hassle you don’t want, unless you have someone that speaks the lingo and is ready to help you all the way!

Apart from that, we had a great experience. We met some wonderful people volunteering and beautiful locals that were always cooperative and ready to help. Volunteering attacks young individuals taking a break from university and working with these energetic young folks is awesome. As well, we worked with other retired individuals and couple who brought their worldly experiences to the projects. Having the same goals (help make the world a better place while traveling) makes it an enriching experience.

The Vietnamese are a beautiful nation, very accepting and very pleasant always smiling and happy. I do not want to make political statements here, but they have had an extremely difficult life with all the wars they have suffered. Wars are political issues and the common folks want to live and be happy; they don’t want war. The country was broken by several wars since the passed 30 years and its economy is now starting to re-shape, in Asia. The common people have hope and work extremely hard every day to survive. Tourism will play a major part in the economic growth. It is a beautiful country with tremendous potential and diversity from South to North.

As for the volunteer tourism, if you want to try it, the GVN-Vietnam program is a good one. The orphanages we worked in need help, are very receptive and the customers…the children are adorable. The babies were wonderful and the children were awesome, demanding nothing more than love and affection. Ok, the odd bottle feed and change of diaper also required but that all goes as part of the experience. It was a bit difficult when time came to leave. You wonder how these babies are going to fare out n the world. Well, if there is a steady supply of volunteer as caring as the group we had, the program should survive and the babies will grow and hopefully be adopted by good parents. Yes, these babies are in the mill for adoption by people in other countries. The problem is the process is to slow and cumbersome but at the same time; they have to ensure that the adopting parents are good, reliable & responsible.

As for the children living in the social centres with or without handicaps, well they need more help than volunteer can provide. These individuals are put aside and are a forgotten society. With out the volunteers, they would certainly have very limited stimulus, education, caring or help other than feeding, cleaning and housing. They are forgotten layer that GVN-Vietnam is caring for and they need a tremendous amount of help to change that society. Right now GVN-Vietnam is working closely with the children providing comfort at the grassroots level. They need help to try and get the government to change their attitude towards handicap people and provide better services. That is a much bigger project that they will have to tackle in the future!

Would we do it again? You bet! Louise and I are already planning our next venture but this time it probably will be in South America and will again be volunteer tourism and chances are that we may not opt for a tour group before or after the volunteering. Don’t get me wrong, we truly enjoyed our tour and the tour group. The friends we made and experiences lived are unforgettable but we also enjoy traveling on our own and exploring at a slower pace and connecting closer with the local folks. With a tour group one tends to be one notch above the real life of the common people and do not get the feel of how people really live!

Thank you for taking time reading these journals. Hope you enjoyed then and that I was able to convey bit of the life we were living in Vietnam. Louise and I truly enjoyed it and already miss the busyness of our daily lives there!

“Be the change you want to see in the world” Gandhi