My move to Vietnam couldn't have been timed better

I am extremely happy about the timing surrounding my move to Vietnam. Unlike a lot of people who are my friends here now in Da Nang, I did not get trapped here by Covid. I would say about 30% of the people I know in the expat community here were just traveling through Vietnam, or visiting a friend here, when the world locked down and they have been here ever since.

For me, my decision to move here on February 22 of 2020 was intentional and planned, mostly because I wanted to have as many "2's" in my arrival date as possible to improve my chances of remember it. Ok not really, that was when my visa was expiring in Thailand and I didn't really have a choice.

So we loaded up the doge in a crate and made our way to the airport with our mere two suitcases.

I suppose the trip was about as hassle-free as you can imagine but we need to keep in mind that this was before the world went completely insane about covaids and locked down the entire damn world. I remember that my flight from Bangkok to Da Nang was one of the bigger planes but I would be surprised if the plane was even at 20% occupancy. It was so empty, in fact, that I was curious as to why they wouldn't just change to a smaller plane. I don't know how the airline industry works but there is no way they were actually making money on this flight.

You can tell by that picture that maybe we were in the beginning stages of people being worried about Covid but not enough to wear masks all the time like the loons they are now. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this flight would be one of the last ones that would fly into Vietnam even to this date. I was extremely lucky that my intended travel dates, which I had booked months before, were still being honored and when we arrived in Vietnam, no one was even taking temperatures. It was definitely the easiest immigration process that I had ever been through. They didn't even ask me any questions. It was just like, ok, here is your one-year visa, see ya!

I have been to many different countries. Virtually no country hands out one-year visas like this.

I will admit that I was very nervous the entire trip but not because of covaids or immigration, but because my little monster was in a tiny cage below the plane and I am quite certain that she was not very happy about it.

We got reunited in the Da Nang entry hall and it was very frustrating for her because there were so many cable ties on her cage and I didn't have a knife or a scissors because well, I had just been on an airplane. letting her out of the cage wasn't the best idea as it turns out, because it was really difficult to get her to go back in it.

We made our way to the condo that I had sourced a month earlier and moved in. The process was actually extremely easy and they had even sent a car to pick me up. It is a good thing that they did send a car because me being the idiot that I am, I accidentally left my black backpack in the car that contained my laptop and several thousand dollars in cash. In a "regular" cab, I would have almost certainly not gotten these items back. It was a major relief when the bag turned back up, and hadn't even been opened, just about 15 minutes later. I gave the guy a big tip for this.

I don't recall exactly when it happened, but it was likely March 1st because countries seem to enjoy making changes to things at the start of a month no matter what it is for, but the country completely locked down shortly after my arrival. In that time period, I feel as though Vietnam has been allowed a much greater range of freedom than most other countries around the world as far as the government forcing people to do certain things. While there have been periods of enforced social distancing and things being shut etc, this was only for a few weeks and other than that, we have always been able to do basically whatever we want.

And here's the kicker: If I had waited just one more week to make this move, I wouldn't have been able to do it. The country has been locked down ever since and almost no one is being allowed in. Whether or not you have a negative test or a vaccine is completely irrelevant at this point: You are not getting into this country unless you are a repatriating Vietnamese. So in that regard I am extremely happy that I arrived here when I did and I wish I could claim that it was because of some intelligence on my part, but it wasn't.... it was all just dumb luck.