Viva Vietnam

Yesterday I travelled on my old adversary to London to get a Vietnamese visa. I’ve been on it since I stopped my regular commute but on those occasions it was still for business. So, this was the first time I’d travelled on it without work as a destination.

You could say, in my quest for Commuter Revenge, this was the first step, the hors d’oeuvres before the main course.

But it still left a bitter taste. It started well enough; I managed to bag a seat in the quiet coach. This is the one SWT reserve for wanna-be disc jockeys that set the volumes of their MP3 players to ear bleed and leak white noise over the rest of us. Oh, and the fiendishly important people who have to phone everyone they know to tell them where they are.

‘Yes, I’m on the train, running late, nanny died, had to phone my American Express concierge service to get a replacement to change Daisy Sunrise’s nappy and take her to the nursery. Bloody Pilipino, so inconvenient dying like that, next time, I’ll get a Sri Lankan, far more robust– oh, hold on I’ve got another call coming in… Sebastian? Yes, I’m on the train….’

So it came as a pleasant surprise when I failed to hear any incessant buzzing, or catch another domestic episode in the life of a working mother. But I should have known better. It came from a pair of voices, although one did nearly all the talking. I couldn’t see them, they were 4 rows away, but I couldn’t fail to hear the main speaker.

By the time I’d completed the sports section I knew she had two daughters, was recently separated and was having trouble with ‘that bastard’s’ maintenance payments. Oh, and her eldest was prone to wearing skirts the width of a belt – ‘It’s only attention seeking… if her father had stayed and worked it out…’

Upon completion of the business section, appropriately, I discovered that work wise Paul needed to be “bought into the loop.” Ian was “in the loop,” and that she wasn’t sure if Eddy “should be in the loop.”

Meanwhile all I could think about was her neck being in a loop; a very tight loop.

Throughout this imprisoned, elongated version of speed dating the lady next to me had been quietly tutting and intermittently raising her eyebrow. Before she could say, ‘oh well, mustn’t grumble (see previous blog entry) I said, ‘do we really need to know her life history?’

            ‘You’ve only heard the half of it. I got on at Basingstoke and had all the details of her new boyfriend. Apparently he’s very… athletic…’ She shuddered as she said this.

This sort of episode is not unusual. When I commuted regularly I heard things that The Jerry Springer Show would have refused to broadcast.

It reinforces what I’ve long suspected. Commuter trains are evil. It’s the duty of each and every commuter to exact revenge. Don’t sit on your arses, and remember revenge is a dish best eaten on a train…

Rant over, now what did I mean to write about today – ah yes - my Vietnamese visa. It’s the only visa in my burgeoning collection that came with a close encounter with Miss Marple. Presumably she lives near the Embassy’s visa section, which is in a leafy suburb of Kensington. I nearly walked straight into her, well to be more accurate, her dog – a tiny little thing that she presumably puts in her pocket if it gets tired after its daily runabout in Hyde Park. Naturally being of the old school she apologised for my walking into her dog. I didn’t say anything in case I incriminated myself.

What comes to mind when you think of Vietnam? Yes, the war and maybe, that shitty song 19, but what would you say the country was like in comparison to say, Russia, or China? The obvious common denominator is their communist past, but that’s about it. Measure them against their larger compatriots in any other respect and there is no comparison. Apart from issuing Visas. I’d like to put on record here and now, when it comes to issuing visas, they leave their former communist allies for dead. The Vietnamese are the Rolls Royce of visa issuance. If their visa issuing section were a train, it would be a Bullet Train. If it was an aircraft – well, you get the picture.

I handed in my application, went for a coffee, only a small cup, made a phone call, only a short call, bumped into Miss Marple, only a gentle bump, and collected my visa. Even if I hadn’t bumped into Miss Marple I suspect it would have been ready. All done in less than an hour. The hardest aspect of getting this visa was getting the Embassy’s entrance gate to open. The electronics were buggered. But this small inconvenience was mitigated by the steady stream of smiling people leaving, clutching visas to their chests, who were happy to let you in.

There was another big advantage to the speedy service. It meant I could avoid the commuter train on my return journey. I know that’s not very important, but I thought I’d keep you in the loop…