Phong Nha – 29th June

Tuesday 29th June was going to turn out to be an extremely disappointing day! Firstly I checked the news while eating gluten free pancakes with the dodgy mixture that, because of the walnut milk, I couldn’t work out how to remedy it. There were 4 more Corona related deaths in Vietnam, all were old or had underlying illnesses, but it was still sad.
Captain Caveman had gone to Phong Nha and it was a warm day for my choice of activity that morning. I had the fan on (we don’t have AC in the kitchen) as I decided it would be a lovely day for making pumpkin and carrot soup. Once I’d combined all the ingredients it went in to the rice cooker and I looked at my phone. We had some bad news from immigration; I was not able to apply for another visa extension and I must leave Vietnam before the 9th July. It was a bit of a shock really because we thought there would at least be one more month or even an extra few days in which to leave, but no – my time in Vietnam was up! With less than 10 days left to leave I decided to make a list of all the things I needed to do, including the different train and flight combos and costs. When Captain Caveman returned he was a bit cheesed off because immigration had told other people who were not paying for visas that they could stay until the end of July, I didn’t even get the chance of a 2 week notice to exit. I found a flight which meant leaving Phong Nha on the morning of Tuesday 6th July. We made some plans including getting a PCR test, then realised we had no wiggle room if anything went wrong at all. I got a lot of messages from people who were trying to help but were telling me conflicting information about whether I could still get a visa elsewhere as the decision for agents working via Hanoi, Danang, Hoi An and Saigon had all reversed the decision and were now able to give 1 more month extensions, some with a proof of flight and some without. I didn’t have time for lunch so snacked on dragon fruit and cashew nuts. Before sunset I suggested we go for a walk round the block and even that didn’t go too well as my ankle started to hurt more than usual half way along. I complained about this to Captain Caveman who suggested we turn back but I wanted to carry on a bit further, we turned round and did a different route, which took longer and was on a small grassy path rather than the road we came on, so I ended up walking for longer anyway. I had my last remaining cider before dinner which was pumpkin soup with sourdough toast and it was bloody delicious. I sent a message to my mom to tell her I had to leave Vietnam within 10 days and had found a flight to Istanbul via Singapore – what a day!!!