Friday, September 8, arrived early for everyone because we had to leave the hotel at 8:00 AM to get medical certificates for the new babies. Everyone is happy, finally back in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and moving on toward the next step of the adoption process. With any luck, we’d be able to complete our interview with CIS today and be off to Hanoi tomorrow.

In contrast to Phan Thiet, HCMC had a feel of hustle and bustle to it as we negotiated our way through throngs of motorbikes in the morning rush hour. Our destination is Cho Ray Hospital, the same place where we got Jessie’s medical certificate a little less than six years ago. At that time we took a picture of Jessie, Grandma Patsy and Nancy at the entrance to the hospital so we decided to do the same this time. Both pictures are below.

Although it doesn’t look like it from the pictures above, Cho Ray had clearly improved in the past six years. The waiting room we were ushered to was very modern and had a video playing showing patients what to expect in the checkup they were about to receive. Apparently, this was the hospital that everyone had to go to to get medical certificates to travel to the US because in the video there was often a map of the US in the background. The process for the babies’ certificates had been streamlined since the last time, too. I remember having to trek a long way across the grounds of the hospital to pay the $50 fee last time, but today the cashier was in the next room.

We waited about 30 minutes and then were called for Alyssa’s checkup. The checkup is really very cursory. Alyssa was weighed and measured and a doctor listened to her heart and pushed on her tummy while the rest of the family looked on with great interest as you can see by the photo below.

The doctor, who in contrast to last time, spoke English, was very courteous and made it clear that we’d be able to pick up the Alyssa’s medical certificate once her passport was brought to the hospital. Today was a busy day for Thao as she was running around finishing up the process for the babies’ passports and, at the same time, getting all of us to the hospital for the medical certificates. Since she couldn’t be in two places at once, her cousin accompanied us to the hospital.I should mention that the hospital is a sprawling complex with many buildings covering an entire city block. We didn’t have to go very far into the complex, but everywhere we looked there were people sitting around and motorbikes parked. Of course, we drew everyone’s attention as we walked by and I couldn’t resist taking a couple of pictures.

The whole process didn’t take very long and soon we were back on the street climbing into the van. At this point, Jessie informed everyone that she was riding back to the hotel with Thao, who had shown up a few minutes earlier, on her motorbike. Nancy would ride with her. At first, I was taken aback by the thought of number one daughter riding on a motorbike completely unprotected amidst the throngs that constantly populated the streets of HCMC. But, as I thought about it, I realized that every Vietnamese family did the same thing with their children and determined that it couldn’t really cause much harm. One thing I should point out. While there are a great many motorbikes on the road, they all move along in a relatively orderly fashion, and, more importantly, they really are not driving too fast. None of the wild accelerating and weaving that characterizes the traffic flows we are so used to in the US. That also added to my peace of mind. So, off went Jessie and Nancy with Thao as the picture below shows while Grandma Patsy and I rode back in the van with Alyssa.

Once back at the hotel, we were again in the ‘wait’ mode until we heard from the CIS office. The process is set up so that once you have all of your paperwork completed, you submit it to the CIS office and are called with an appointment time, which is normally in the next 24 hours.  All of us, of course, were hoping that would be yet today. A couple of hours later, just before noon, we got the call from Thao that CIS had given us appointments at 11:30 AM on Monday. What a disappointment! That would definitely add several days on to our stay in Vietnam and we were also hearing that the visa processing in Hanoi was also going real slow. But, there was not much that could be done.

A bit later, Nancy received a personal call from a colleague at the consulate who invited her to lunch. She went to lunch to discuss other business, but upon returning we found out that we would be able to talk with the CIS officer later that day. We weren’t sure if we’d get our clearance or not, but we wanted to explain our situation and seek the CIS officer’s advice on whether we should complete our US immigrant visa processing in Vietnam or do it once we had returned to Ankara.

So, around 4:00 PM we met with the CIS officer. She indicated that all of our paperwork was fine and that she would fill out the necessary forms to recommend that an immigrant visa be issued. In her estimation based on her review of our documents, it didn’t really matter if the visa was issued in Vietnam or Turkey. That was great news. But we still had to figure out what to do about Alyssa’s Turkish visa.

Back at the hotel, Nancy emailed the consular officer at the embassy in Ankara and posed the question, “Why can’t we just buy a visa for Alyssa at the airport?” About an hour later, the response arrived, saying that the Turkish immigration authorities had agreed to such a plan. Now we were in business as this meant we could leave Vietnam directly from HCMC and avoid the trip to Hanoi completely. I just had to get our travel arrangements adjusted and we’d be all set. But, we were running out of time. It was already late in the day in Vietnam and I only had a couple of hours to contact the travel office at the embassy in Ankara, get them to change our reservations (if possible) and email us a confirmation of the new itinerary. And, we also needed to receive via email copies of letters explaining our situation that the consular officer in Ankara had written to the Turkish authorities. Thank goodness for laptops, email and Skype. It took several hours and I worked on it late into the night, but, before going to bed at 11:00 PM, I had all the necessary documents in hand and flight arrangements adjusted. We’d be leaving Vietnam on Sunday and arriving back in Ankara on Monday, September 11. What a sudden turn of events! I was tired, but very happy with the way things had turned out.

And, while in the process of getting all of this done, I took a short break to take Jessie out for a walk to buy some gum, which I had been promising I would do all evening. Jessie had been very patient and I had reached a point in my efforts where I had to wait for email to arrive so it was a pleasant diversion. I figured it would be easy to find a store with gum, but it turned out to be more of a challenge than I thought. Jessie and I walked several blocks before finding a woman who was selling gum on the street. As we neared the hotel on our return, several ’street children’ a few years older than Jessie approached us. Ironically, they were selling gum and quite aggressive about it. When we said we already had some, they continued to press us and starting asking Jessie where she was from. It was clear they recognized that she had been born in Vietnam, but they also realized that she couldn’t speak Vietnamese and that she spoke native English. It was the kind of experience that I’d always assumed Jess would face at some point in her life when she comes face to face in a very direct way with her personal history — where she was born, being adopted, etc. She handled it very well even though it was clear that it wasn’t a real pleasant experience for her.

Changed my mind and read this one. Fascinating about Jessie and Tim running into the street kids.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.