A wee blip in the journey
Do you remember in my last post, when at the end of our night of luxury I skipped off with a local walking street food lady, under the shelter of her umbrella to make it safely to our hostel doors? And I turned around to see Izzy wading his way through the rain and the puddles? Well, unbeknownst to us, this was the beginning of a wee blip in our journey.
I had shot off and left Izzy in the taxi to sort out the bill, which left one of my particularly OCD jobs undone: checking, double checking, and triple checking for things left behind. Doing this always gets a wry smile from my husband who clearly (up until now) thought that I was a little over the top.
The morning after the late night taxi ride we got up at the crack of dawn to walk downtown, in amongst hundreds of Saigon locals who had been up and at it for hours, to catch a bus to Da Lat - a beautiful wee town up in the mountains of Vietnam.
On arriving in Da Lat we were pleasantly surprised to find it cold and raining, with a local family waiting to welcome us into their wee home. (Later I cursed the rain and freezing 12 degree temperatures, and started pining for heat again). Mai, a single mama, and her beautiful wee son Sammy were so lovely about settling us in and keeping us warm that we instantly felt at home, and didn't want to leave the house. We spent lots of time baby snuggling and drinking hot tea under a duvet while watching movies - it had been months since we had to work hard to keep warm!
After a couple of days of rest and relaxation a thought popped into my mind: "hey, I haven't seen our passports in awhile.." Izzy dismissed the thought with his usual easy-breezy "I'm sure they're around somewhere", and we went back to watching the movie. Within half an hour though, we had upturned everything in our room and checked, double checked, and triple checked every nook and cranny of our packs. Ah, crap.
I had shot off and left Izzy in the taxi to sort out the bill, which left one of my particularly OCD jobs undone: checking, double checking, and triple checking for things left behind. Doing this always gets a wry smile from my husband who clearly (up until now) thought that I was a little over the top.
The morning after the late night taxi ride we got up at the crack of dawn to walk downtown, in amongst hundreds of Saigon locals who had been up and at it for hours, to catch a bus to Da Lat - a beautiful wee town up in the mountains of Vietnam.
On arriving in Da Lat we were pleasantly surprised to find it cold and raining, with a local family waiting to welcome us into their wee home. (Later I cursed the rain and freezing 12 degree temperatures, and started pining for heat again). Mai, a single mama, and her beautiful wee son Sammy were so lovely about settling us in and keeping us warm that we instantly felt at home, and didn't want to leave the house. We spent lots of time baby snuggling and drinking hot tea under a duvet while watching movies - it had been months since we had to work hard to keep warm!
After a couple of days of rest and relaxation a thought popped into my mind: "hey, I haven't seen our passports in awhile.." Izzy dismissed the thought with his usual easy-breezy "I'm sure they're around somewhere", and we went back to watching the movie. Within half an hour though, we had upturned everything in our room and checked, double checked, and triple checked every nook and cranny of our packs. Ah, crap.
I got online and started making phone calls to our hostel in Saigon, the bus company and the New Zealand embassy. The language barrier nearly did my head in, and everybody seemed to take that same "we don't have them but you'll be fine, have a good day" kind of attitude. When Mai arrived home, I told her and she nearly dropped her child she was so worried. She re-called everyone who had blown me off and spoke to them in Vietnamese.
Success! Remember that taxi ride? Our passports had fallen out of Izzy's bag and were sitting (in a pretty purple IKEA ziplock bag, of course) on the back seat. The driver realised when he picked up his next people, looked inside and saw the card for our hostel, called them and said he had them. Of course, in true Asian style, he didn't drop them back to the hostel because this was a perfect chance for him to make a bit of extra money.
Mai called the taxi driver several times and painstakingly persuaded him to drive the long distance to a transport service depot before his next shift, pay for them to be transported to us, and not ask anything in return. Here in Asia they love getting 'lucky' - the number of stores and hotels called "Lucky Hotel", "Lucky Star Hotel", "Lucky Phones", "Lucky Food" etc is crazy. He finally agreed when I heard Mai pull the "lucky for your family" card. Nice.
And so, with an extra unplanned night in Da Lat, and 36 hours after our scary realisation - we were reunited with our passports, and ready to move on to Hoi An. All while having our faith in humanity restored.
Some may say we're lucky, I'd say luck had nothing to do with it. We are totally blessed.
"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
- Mother Teresa
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