Trapped in Vietnam
Hello, My name is Satbir Singh, known to my friends in Oxford as ‘Sky’. I’m currently in Vietnam, in a town called Nha Trang. I’m on a year’s break from Oxford, and have travelled across the Eurasian continent by land, travelling on the Trans-Siberian and the Chinese state railways for nearly four months now. Last night my passport was stolen on a train here from a town called Danang.
I went to the train station to get a report filed, and the useless clerks just sat and stared idly at me. I went back this morning with a friend, Ngan, who speaks Vietnamese, to get a police report, as it’s the only way to get a new passport issued. The police said they do not take responsibility for the trains, and the rail authorities say that security is the police’s problem.
Nobody will give me a police report, as the police, highly corrupt and under the control of the executive, do not want to acknowledge that such crimes occur. See no evil, hear no evil, so to speak. I have been desperately trying to get a police report, but to no avail. I’ve been calling in favours from Delhi to DC, but the authorities here listen to nobody. Large sums of foreign currency are the only thing that seem to hold any sway here, preferably in US Dollars.
In the meantime, I can’t leave the country, I can’t go home, and I’m not legally here, as I have no passport or Visa until the issue is resolved. A number of kinked local officials have asked for money, which I have refused to provide them with, with the threat of reporting me to immigration, for being present on Vietnamese soil without the correct documentation, which I naturally don’t have.
So basically I’m a sitting duck, with the prospect of a lengthy term in a Vietnamese prison hanging over my head. I’ve been on the phone to the British consulate in Saigon, and to my parents, who are currently somewhere between Thailand and Laos, for hours, and nothing seems to be working. For now, I’m stateless, and being told that I’m not to leave my hotel until the situation comes to a head. With a typhoon about to make land, that’s not a bad idea, but, ultimately, I am under house arrest for a crime that I haven’t been told about, and that I certainly have not committed, as a result of some bastard pickpocketing me.
2nd Nov 2006