Here are a few slices from the journey we took to get our son in Vietnam last month. The trip was long and wonderful in many ways. This account is merely long, and not so wonderful, but perhaps you might find it interesting. Pictures and more details of the journey can be found at my wife’s blog.
1. Anticipation
The only trepidation I have on the outset is the involvement of American Airlines in our journey. (You may remember the Dreaded Mechanical Problem from last fall’s trip to Salt Lake.) We are taking AA from Austin to LAX, and if they screw this up, it could throw the whole trip, like a bowling ball striking a house of cards. This time, however, we’re prepared, with a ten-hour layover in LAX before our flight to Taipei. It turns out that we don’t need such elaborate precautions: We depart on-time and make excellent progress.
LAX is a complete zoo. I was previously unaware of the sheer idiocy of their international terminal being completely decoupled from the rest of the airport; meaning, of course, another heartening trip through security. Actually, we end up going through security multiple times as we canvas the international terminal—in vain—for an establishment that might serve a halfway decent meal. We wile away the hours of the layover with a laptop and some DVD’s of the Lost television show. Finally, we can check in, and, to our delight, we obtain the exit row for the 15-hour flight to Taipei. Score!
I read about 400 pages from the books I’ve brought; the wife snoozes with blankets piled high on her lap (the exit row is drafty). Both of us stretch luxuriously in the six feet of empty space between our seats and the bulkhead. I ask the flight attendant for a drink sans ice, just for practice because I’m positive the ice they loaded at LAX is potable. Finally, we begin our descent into Taipei. It’s foggy and all surfaces are covered in drizzle.
Chiang Kai Shek airport in Taipei is the quietest airport I’ve ever visited, except perhaps the airfield on Sao Nicolau, Cape Verde (one turboprop departure per day). There are lots of people. There are lots of gleaming, duty-free cologne and liquor establishments. But nobody says a word. It’s refreshing after recalling the 10 hours of chaos at LAX. I think TPE is my new favorite airport. It’s also, apparently, Hello Kitty’s favorite airport. She owns gate C3, which is also our departure gate. She has a theme song and a playground and a giant marquee, all right there at C3. We drink in the goodness of Hello Kitty for a while before we board our flight to Ho Chi Minh City.
The three hours to HCMC pass in a blur. I am running on fumes at this point, and being anywhere except in a coach airline seat is tremendously appealing. Finally, we make it to HCMC and plow through customs, immigration and baggage claim. The first baggage miracle occurs: no lost luggage! We pile into a minivan with our bags and brace ourselves for a long ride to the hotel.
We are in a sea of scooters. It’s a steel stampede, with the van’s driver applying his horn at every opportunity to make a hole. Intersections are river-like, with trickles of scooters and occasional cars and vans haltingly negotiating their way through the crowd. I whip out the camcorder to capture some vintage HCMC street footage through the van window, but we arrive at the hotel almost immediately.
The Park Royal Hotel is a reasonable oasis. There are clean sheets, a marble shower, and soft towels. We vow to stay awake till sunset to fight the jetlag, and mostly succeed. Someone in an adjoining room is singing karaoke until near bedtime.
2. Meeting
A brief flight to Da Nang (second baggage miracle: no lost luggage again!) and we check into a resort at the edge of town. We can’t properly enjoy the beach because of the weather (rainy) and our fatigue, but we don’t care. We have only a short wait before we drive to the orphanage to meet the boy.
The road to the orphanage is a washboard affair, like you might come across off the beaten path in the U.S., in areas that missed out on the miracle of the Interstate highway system. Half-paved and half packed clay, it is murder on suspensions (and backsides still tender from hours of coach airline seating). Everywhere are signs of old and new: a gleaming, electric billboard advertising computers standing in the middle of a rice field, with farmers and water buffalos in its shade; chickens scurrying out of path of teens on scooters too involved in their cell phone conversations to pay heed; a satellite dish mounted on the roof of a tiny tin shack surrounded by rusted tractors. Bicycles form a higher percentage of traffic as we get closer to the orphanage. The few four-wheeled vehicles are industrial-style trucks with water tanks or other commercial loads.
The orphanage is a nondescript, green-washed building with only a few red crosses painted in the drive to advertise its purpose (at least to me, the American observer). Three large rooms at the front, with an indeterminate number of antechambers closed off. There are babies lying on bamboo and foam mats spread out in the main room. We peer anxiously from baby to baby to spot our son, and at last we find him!
He is the only one crawling and moving substantially on his own. His face is set in that grave expression we later christen “travel mode” because he assumes it when meeting strangers. He warms slightly to us after several minutes on the wife’s lap: a slight curl at the edge of the mouth and a tilt of the eyes. The orphanage director coaxes a full smile out of him when he comes over to where we are sitting. We spend the afternoon getting acquainted. I take some video footage but we must borrow the camera of another visitor to take stills, since we left the media card for our still camera at the hotel. Not for the last time, we vow to buy a newer camera when we get back to the States. The babies go down for naps as we are leaving, and we see our son pulling himself up to a standing position within his rocking crib, observing the world around him interestedly.
The next day is the official ceremony in a different town that appears to be equidistant from the hotel and the orphanage. It’s still cold and rainy and I wonder why I didn’t think to suggest we bring a hat for the boy. We wait in an office until it is our turn to sign the adoption paperwork, which we do in turn while our son slaps the desk with both hands. “He’s a drummer,” our translator observes at one point, in a supreme understatement. We soon learn our son’s favorite activities are: 1) whacking anything and everything, repeatedly, with his open palms, and 2) attempting to put anything and everything in his mouth. Upstairs from the paperwork offices, the provincial officials hold a brief ceremony and there are photos of our family posing next to a flag of Vietnam and a bust of Ho Chi Minh. It’s official, at least as far as Vietnam is concerned: we have a son. The orphanage has supplied very stylish pink hat to keep him warm, and we’re obliged to use it until we can find something more suitable for our son’s sensibilities. Even at seven months, there are proprieties to be observed!
3. Scramble
We have one more night in Da Nang before we begin the next phase of the paperchase. We’re very curious: how will the boy handle his first night outside the orphanage? Will he have a meltdown when he realizes the orphanage nannies are not going to be around? Will he start from a nap and exclaim, in Twilight Zone fashion, “Who are you people?!”
We needn’t have worried. He has a happy bath in the hotel sink, downs a jug of formula like a champ and, after a relatively brief crying spell, he crashes for the night. We breathe a collective sigh of relief. Mingled, of course, with trepidation: was this a honeymoon, and if so, how long would it last?
Nothing but the best for this kid: The next day we fly business class from Da Nang back to HCMC. He hams it up for the camera in the business class lounge at the Da Nang airport, and then promptly falls asleep in mom’s arms for the hour flight. We could get used to this. Collecting all our bags (baggage miracle #3, not one lost yet!) is somewhat more complicated when the baby is strapped in on one parent’s chest. And of course, timing diaper changes, bottles and naps with the flight and airport waiting is a fine art that I believe will challenge even the most seasoned, veteran parents. At this point we are elated to have come this far, but realizing also how fatiguing it is to travel with a baby.
Once we’re back in the Park Royal, the chase begins anew: passport, medical examination, photos… all these stops make for a long day for the boy and his parents. He sleeps in the van as we drive (apparently he’s one of those babies who is lulled by vibrations). We continue to marvel at the craziness of Ho Chi Minh City, with its myriads of scooters, shops and street vendors. The shops all appear to be organized in districts. One street seems to contain nothing but endless, narrow shops displaying cellphones. The next street has computer monitors, and the next, televisions. Then an abrupt change to several blocks of clothing boutiques. By the time the boy has his visa photos taken in an open-air camera shop, he is ready to be done for the day, and so are we. All the paperwork has been submitted, and now we wait for it to be processed.
4. Waiting
It’s a quiet weekend. We reason that, since we have several days to wait for the passport, we might as well relax and get acquainted with the boy over the weekend, then do some sightseeing early in the following week. We are bemused by the wedding receptions taking place in the hotel courtyard outside our room. It is the same music program each evening, and it begins just as we put the boy down for the night. The music, a cheerful mixture of 1980s ballads that has seemingly nothing whatsoever to do with matrimony, does not faze him, though after four consecutive nights, it starts to drive mom and dad insane.
Monday evening we notice that he has a slight cough and a sniffle as he takes his bottle. Hoping it is a minor thing, we bundle him and put him to bed early, but the next day it is clearly a full-on cold virus, complete with gunk in the nose and a rattling cough. I brave crossing the street (which involves walking at a steady pace into the sea of scooters and letting them drive around me) to find a nasal aspirator. Neither model I purchase is up to U.S. standards, but we ultimately are able to keep the worst of the mucus out of his nose.
The cough, on the other hand, is worrisome, and, late Tuesday night, the fever of 103 degrees F sends us scrambling to the 24-hour clinic. It is a surreal experience to cruise through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City at 2:00 in the morning in a taxi, with your fevered baby in your arms, wondering if the driver clearly understood your instructions and whether you’ll end up at the clinic or somewhere else entirely. At last we arrive. Once there we are relieved to see the fever at “only” 101.6 degrees F. It turns out our vaunted ear thermometer is useless in children as young as our son because their ear canals are not sufficiently developed to give an accurate reading. The doctor prescribes Tylenol to bring down the fever, cough medicine, and an antibiotic to combat the opportunist bacteria catching a free ride in the gunk in the boy’s chest. Total cost for the visit and three prescriptions: $31. (No complaints there!)
The cold puts the kibosh on our sightseeing plans and we spend the next four days in the hotel, frequently ordering room service and anxiously monitoring the boy’s hacking cough. The honeymoon is definitely over, as the cold and gunk play havoc with his sleep schedule and the virus, and medications, make him alternately sleepy and fussy. Every so often, the cough reflex catches him too soon after a bottle feeding, and up comes the most recent bottle, typically on the wife’s jeans.
By the end of the following week, he has broken the back on the cold. We finally have the passport in hand and we’re ready to head to Hanoi to get his U.S. visa.
5. Hanoi and Home
Hanoi differs markedly from Ho Chi Minh City. For one thing, it is substantially colder. Our flight (again, business class, again, no lost luggage) ends and cold air roars into the cabin from the gate. I realize I had packed according to HCMC standards, and therefore I have no coat, and only a single clean long-sleeved shirt. Fortunately, there is a small market store with baby clothes just around the corner from our hotel, and we are able to get hats and long sleeved shirts to keep the boy warm during his stay in Hanoi.
The drive from the airport to our hotel is substantially longer than the route to the hotel in HCMC, and we are already tired from the 2-hour flight with the boy. However, we take time to appreciate the French-inspired architecture of the homes and businesses in the North. There is agricultural activity here as well, but also a fair amount of industry on our path into the city. As in the South, there are contrasts between traditional and transitional lifestyles, technology juxtaposed with stunning natural backdrops. The city itself seems more handsome than HCMC. Again, shopping seems to be organized to group like shops together. Our hotel is in the middle of the bathroom fixtures district, with sinks and toilets vying with faucets and tile surrounds for attention.
The Hanoi Horison hotel is not as good a deal as the Park Royal. For one thing, they charge us $35 for five days of wireless internet access. For another, the smaller room, musty bathroom, and threadbare sheets and blankets belie the hotels “five star” reputation. But the breakfast buffet is good and our room is reasonably clean and quiet.
Friday brings our appointment with the consulate to get the U.S. visa for the boy. The interview is brief and expensive ($400 for the visa processing fee, on top of hundreds of dollars we’ve already paid for background checks, fingerprints, and application fees). We are instructed to come back Monday.
Our final weekend in Vietnam is a mixture of anxiousness, impatience and excitement. We fret about the visa, our travel arrangements, and the boy’s health. We are impatient to get home but excited to be in Hanoi, which is, like HCMC, crowded and congested, but also very beautiful. We spend some time doing some minor sightseeing, catching a charming water puppet show and touring the venerable Temple of Literature. At last, Monday afternoon, we receive the boy’s immigrant visa, the final piece of the adoption puzzle. With it, he’ll be a U.S. citizen as soon as he enters the country.
Packing, a scramble to the airport, and, at the ticket counter, then the gut-wrenching realization that we had neglected to purchase a lap fare ticket for the boy. What an omission! And at such a late hour, with the flight boarding momentarily. I hurry to another ticket counter and try to remain calm while the clerk painstakingly fills out two paper tickets, by hand, for the different legs of the trip. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone write more slowly. After three millennia, she’s finished, swipes my card and then, just as slowly, fills out my receipt. At last I rush back to complete the check-in, and we’re on our way.
Hanoi to Taipei is decent, and quick. Once again, TPE welcomes us and we discover that Hello Kitty not only owns a gate, but also a baby lounge complete with sterile hot water, a sink, changing tables, and a couch (in pink, of course).
Taipei to LAX is, unfortunately, the worst part of the trip. Mercifully, the trip is only eleven hours when heading east instead of the fifteen it took when heading west, but that is the only thing we have going for us on this long journey. The boy refuses to be comforted after awakening two hours into the flight, so mom and dad alternate walking him up and down the aisles of the plane for hours at a time—with mom putting in perhaps twice or three times as much time as dad in this respect. The nightmare finally ends as we touch down at LAX. It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, and we’ve been on the move for twenty hours.
There must be some unwritten rule regarding the number of lines in which an international traveler must wait to be processed when entering a new country. Further, there must be a rider on that unwritten rule that quadruples the requirement for new babies coming in on immigrant visas. I find myself growing increasingly impatient as various officials direct us to wait in a variety of lines.
Somewhere along the way we pick up an extra passport that was mistakenly given to us during one of the many exchanges of such documents at windows and desks. We only realize our surplus when we finally make it to the American Airlines domestic counter to check in for our flight to Austin. And there it is, the passport of some hapless kid, folded inside mine. After check-in we deliver the passport to airport security, as there is no way for us to get past them back to customs and hope to reconnect directly with the passport’s owner. We sincerely hope that the security folks do their job and that the passport is thus quickly returned to its owner. But also, and perhaps slightly more sincerely, we are awfully glad that it wasn’t one of our passports that was misplaced in this fashion. Thus is the dog-eat-dog world of international adoption travel.
As we stagger through security once again (thanks again, LAX international terminal!), the wife is searched, my bag is searched, and the boy is searched. By this time both adults are feeling light-headed from exhaustion and the boy is just feeling cranky. Only four hours to go before we board our final flight to Austin…
Or not. Weather in St Louis delays our ride for another three hours. (Curse you, American Airlines! I know it was a weather delay, but it just had to be AA, didn’t it? They never let us win.). This time is spent in dreadful stoicism in a vacant customer service room trying to stay awake while simultaneously attempting to keep the boy from licking every surface in sight. Mercifully, when we finally do board, he sleeps for the entire trip. After our final luggage miracle (no lost pieces, again), we wait briefly for our ride. A kind friend from Church picks us up at the airport (at 3:00 am), and, slightly before 4, we at last make it home.
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