新年快乐 Web Surfer!!

I've returned from a three week trip to Vietnam, with a new lease on life and a fresh understanding of just how bad an international holiday can go. This month's article is a reflection on my journey in the form of a How-To guide.

What to do if you get a visa that's only valid for fifteen minutes (How-To Guide)

To peek behind the curtain, the article is written as a way too specific guide about what to do if you find yourself in this exact situation: entering the country with a visa that's only valid for one day at 11:45pm. It's the story of me and 15 minute visa.

The guide itself is a joke, and to maintain plausible deniability that I was writing a generic how-to guide and not a travel blog, I had to write the first half in second person past tense, and the second half in second person future tense.

She would have given you a look that you might have at the time read as sympathy—especially if she was the same immigration official that first sent you away to get a stamp. Eventually, she stamped your passport and waved you through. You would have foolishly breathed a sigh of relief.

In hindsight you will come to recognise this look was something else—a look often seen on the individual faces of a bureaucracy: “Well, it’s not my problem.”

I didn't want to include any pictures of myself, to keep up the illusion. But just for my loyal newsletter readers, here's a picture of me on the first day at my absolute lowest point.

And here's a picture on the first day when I had my flight booked and I was feeling optimistic.

It's quite fun writing something where you yourself are the butt of the joke. My actions during this trip made me look truly like an idiot. Below is a full list of the steps that you must follow exactly to resume a similar visa issue.

• Step One: Realise you've made a mistake
• Step Two: Try not to panic
• Step Three: Contact your Vietnamese uncle
• Step Four: Question your transgender identity
• Step Five: Make friends
• Step Six: Leave the country
• Step Seven: Enjoy Bangkok
• Step Eight: Collapse to the floor of the Butterfly Garden
• Step Nine: Enjoy the rest of your holiday

Regardless Vietnam is an amazing country, and I had an amazing time. If my surname didn't give it away, I am half Vietnamese. This was my first time returning to the motherland in my adult life. I loved every city we visited. Before we left and me and my buddies were planning the trip, they asked if I spoke any Vietnamese. I went to Vietnamese school when I was younger for four years, but I didn't learn much and I've retained even less. There's an episode of Bojack Horseman where monolingual Vietnamese-American Diane Nguyen travels to Vietnam expecting some kind of homecoming or connection but instead feels lost and isolated. With that episode in mind, I told my friends to treat me as if I wasn't Vietnamese for the purpose of the trip. I was just going to be like an other Aussie tourist.

In the end, I did feel a connection. I was still lost language-wise, but to the spirit of Vietnam I felt very connected. My grandparents were on the losing side of the war, and without realising it I was holding on to some residual generational distrust of modern Vietnam. But visiting, I found a happy, proud, and beautiful nation.

The other thing I found was an extreme amount of cheekiness. This is how I felt connected the most. I am a very cheeky person. My brothers are all very cheeky. My father is cheeky. We are just a cheeky people.