Hanoi - VISA issue & jazz bar

That day we did not do much but was mostly full of surprises.
To start from the beginning. When entering Vietnam, some tourists can stay up to 15 days without VISA (I.e French passport for example), but for a 30 day stay, you would otherwise need a tourist VISA. You can apply and pay (25 euros) for these VISA online and it takes 3 days to be processed until you get a confirmation letter per email to show at immigration when you arrive and they put the 30 day stamp on your Passport. This is the standard process and it worked out perfectly fine for Niki. But of course, it did not work out like this for me ...
When we applied for our online VISA (1 week ahead back when we were in Indonesia), somehow the website said that the payment failed even though I could clearly see on my bank account in went through. I decided to wait a bit and got no confirmation. I tried writing email to support and their website . No answer. So I decided to just show that my request is being process to immigration when landing and they could check in their system that it is paid. Unfortunately they do not speak English at all and could not care less. They simply put a 15 days stamp on my passport according to my French citizenship.
No worries, I decided I would jusg extend it while being in Hanoi. Little did I know that it is almost impossible. Once you are in the country, they make it very very hard for you to extend it and get the tourist visa. I tried going to the French Embassy and they told me to go check at the immigration office of Hanoi city so we went there too that morning. When you enter that building, there is no system whatsoever: I could not understand who is waiting in line for what and how people are prioritized. And most of all, not a single explanation is in English..  it is all only and everywhere written in Vietnamese. For an immigration office ... I talked to this 1 foreigner girl that I saw and she told me her situation was a bit different but she managed to get the stamp after leaving her passport at that office for a couple days, coming twice to wait 4 hours each to do the process and translation an entire form from Vietnamese to English with her phone as she had to full it out.
Every single step of the way when going to different places or people for advice or even online research to solve my situation, the outcome was the same: the "best" way in the end is to leave the country and come back. So I made up my mind after all this hustle, gave up, and decided I would just book a round trip flight Hanoi - Bangkok in 1 day on the last day of my current stamp on my passport (12th of November) which luckily was a Saturday. Just to get a new stamp.
So that is what we did that morning.
Lesson: if you go to Vietnam and wants to stay longer than 15 days, make sure to do your VISA in advance and to get it before arriving in the country. Otherwise you ll need to do what they call a Visa-run.
More info to come about that day for the post of 12. 11.

We ended our day in a jazz bar near the Opera in Hanoi.Meer informatie