So the big talk of the town for me anyway has been how difficult it has been to get a flight out of this country at all. All inbound international flights have been banned by the government for quite some time so not very many airlines were even offering departing international flights. Seeing as how you can't come back if you leave it is understandable why Vietnamese people would be a bit hesitant to get on these flights as well.
The major issue is that I couldn't get most of the world's airlines to respond to my inqiries at all.
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People would normally just book something online and I'm with you on that notion bro, trust me, but there is a dog in the mix here and I absolutely must make certain that she is allowed on the flight before I book the ticket.
Therefore, just tooling on over to the airline's website and booking whatever I want isn't an option for me... I have to speak to a human being to make sure that there is space on the flight for my dog. For reasons that I do not understand nor am I going to look into because it is probably a bunch of red-tape bullshit anyway, there are only a certain number of animals that can be in the cargo hold of any particular flight. Some flights don't have pressurized cargo areas either and that would be certain death for any creature that needs to breathe in order to survive.
Any of the carriers out of North America, which I prefer to not fly with anyway... you can go ahead and forget about talking to a human. Air Canada was the worst of the bunch as they would have a callback schedule and put you in a queue where they would call you once a rep was available.... or so they said because they never called me back despite multiple requests. I even set up a USA number that would forward the call to my mobile here in Vietnam in case there was a "we don't call international numbers" scheme they had in place.
I was able to get Air France on the phone but only after I cheated and called the number that is reserved for disabled passengers. Even then I was on hold for nearly an hour before I spoke to a person who immediately tried to get me to call a different number that she knowns damn well no one is going to answer.
None of these airlines (and I contacted over a dozen) replied in any meaningful capacity via email.
So I am going to go ahead and plug the airlines that answered the phone and were helpful: All Nippon Airlines and Korean Airlines.
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ANA, despite being a massive airline with destinations all over the world never had me on hold for more than a few minutes and they were extremely helpful and got me sorted out in no time at all.
I now have a flight for mid September to get out of this Covid-overreacting-hellhole that is Vietnam.
But we aren't out of the woods yet.
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The flight that I am departing on leaves from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) but I do not live there, nor have I ever even been there. At the moment, all domestic flights out of Da Nang are on hold, and there is no clear timeline on when or even "if" that is going to change. We are also not allowed out of own neighborhoods at the moment, let alone our provinces, should I decide to bite the bullet and get in an extortionately priced taxi from here to there.
I paid 113,340 JPY (Japanese Yen) for my one-way flight and I don't expect anyone to do a conversion, but this, considering the times we are in right now, is a very reasonable cost for a trans-pacific flight.
The only issue that we have right now is whether or not I am even going to be able to get to Saigon in order to catch my international flight. I will of course have to get a ton of paperwork for the dog done again and then be at the whimsy of the domestic carriers who care just a little bit more than zero about whether or not my dog can get on the plane with me. Therefore, I am going to book multiple flights in order to ensure that I actually get there.
While it isn't their fault that Covid happened, Vietnam's response to it has been some of the most ass-backwards reactions I can imagine to anything and their demand that all foreigners get out of here while simultaneously making it extremely difficult for us to actually do that has been completely crazy.
So if everything goes according to plan I will be putting this country into my rearview, permanently, in mid September.
For all of you out there experiencing Covid-blues, I'm right there with you folks. I try to remain optimistic about this entire situation and hope we can look back some years from now and regale one another with the tough times we went through and have that mutual misery bring us together in a way. I also hope almost all world leaders get voted out, and that some people face consequences for the terrible manner in which this has been handled on a global scale.
That's a story for another time. In the meantime, please have a look at ANA for your airline needs in the future because so far, they have been basically the only airline in the world that seems to give half a shit about my situation.