After yesterday’s fiasco I was exhausted and still pretty cheesed off with the whole debacle when I woke up on Tuesday 7th September. I should have been leaving here today to go to Hanoi airport for my flight to Singapore tomorrow. It was raining still and continued to do so most of the day, Captain Caveman was more mad today than he had shown yesterday but there was nothing either of us could do about the entire situation. Before I had even got out of bed I was looking at ways to try to recoup some money as we had spent so much on something that didn’t go to plan and were already pretty skint to start with. I looked in to any possibility of getting money transferred from Turkey via email or letter and, having let our Turkish agent (and friend) know I wouldn’t be arriving on Thursday, as hoped, I was given some help to try to get the money transferred. Still from my bed, I was on the phone to Singapore Airlines customer services to sort out my flight, we knew we couldn’t get a refund but they were able to move the flights to another date, fortunately without having to pay any more. Singapore Airlines had made my day, they were so good and easy to deal with, very thorough and efficient and said I could move my flight to later in September, or even in to October. I didn’t unpack as we thought there may be a chance that, if lockdown is lifted in the next couple of days, I might make it out earlier. We had leftover dinner made in to chicken and pepper egg fried rice for a late breakfast, which was delicious. I got a message confirming the safe delivery of my passport to immigration, which we had to pay 500,000vnd (£16) for and I managed to get the visa extension price for the same price as previously. I found the green beetle had fallen in to our pool and was struggling to get out because of the rain so I rescued him with the arm of my sunglasses and he looked as tired and fed up as me. I was late checking the news today as Captain Caveman and I were looking into the number of reported cases in Quang Binh, strangely they reported 91 cases for the 2nd day running which seemed a bit of a coincidence. Also in the Vietnamese news
a man was given 5 years in jail for spreading Corona virus to 8 people, 1 died. You can read about it here:
https://bbc.in/3n94uGX
I messaged the Elements owner to let her know I hadn’t left and that I planned to stay a little longer, luckily she was happy with that. She even arranged to send us some treats in the form of baguettes, tangerines and potatoes which got to us, from Dong Hoi, in hardly any time at all – it was so kind of her!
We had chicken and napa cabbage baguettes for lunch and then the water went off. In the scheme of things having no water was a minor inconvenience so we weren’t too bothered as Duyet and Cuong had to drag a hose across the pool and into the tank in the roof from the property opposite, using a ladder that didn’t look too robust.
We shared passion fruit as a snack, had a beer and it was strangely not a stressful day at all. For dinner we had chicken, peppers, napa cabbage and BBQ sauce in fresh baguettes and went to bed early.
Unfortunately, my leaving situation had come to a dead end and we had to accept that I definitely would not be able to leave during a lockdown and I’d have to just wait until restrictions were lifted. The next announcement was due on the 9th September but we hoped that tomorrow we would find out that lockdown would end on Thursday, then I could leave without any drama!
joloyolo 