Nearly one month as an illegal alien!

I should probably be more concerned about this than I am but at the moment at least I am not at all concerned about the fact that for the first time in the near 2 decades I have spent living overseas, I am an illegal. I am technically breaking the law by the fact that I have given up on trying to secure a legal visa and am intentionally and knowingly overstaying my visa which expired nearly a month ago.

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This wasn't a decision that I took lightly and most of it is driven by the fact that I have a dog that I will not put at risk even if it means that I have to break the law in order to keep her safe. At the moment, nothing is very clear about what is happening with visas in Vietnam and it was actually today that an announcement was meant to take place about the great reopening of the country that has been closed to almost anyone for over 2 years.

Vietnam was one of the first countries to close because of Covid and for a while it looked like their isolationist tactics were working and this country was the envy of the world and the news was praising how they were one of the only countries in the world that "did things right."

Of course the mood all changed when just like everywhere else in the world the virus made its way into the country anyway and spread far and wide to every corner of the country. Several rather extreme lockdowns, one of which included more than a month where no one was allowed to so much as leave their houses, the virus continued down its inevitable path of spreading anyway. It's difficult to get real numbers because Vietnam doesn't have a free press and the government treats the population in a "need to know" basis which basically means they don't really tell us anything.

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The days of locking down streets, neighborhood, regions, and even entire cities are long behind us now and while there is no official word I believe that this country is going to go down a similar path that many other have already and that will be to simply give up. They did their vaccinations, they did their lockdowns, they did their quarantine programs, they didn't let nearly anyone new into the country and yet the virus continues to spread.

Just a few days ago I was hanging out with someone who told me that he wasn't feeling very well the next day and him being a nervous person, he went and got a test and tested positive. I hung out with this person for hours the day prior and nothing happened to me... I feel fine. Maybe I'm positive, maybe I'm not. I could just be one of those people that it doesn't affect. I don't know.

The fact of the matter in my mind is that this part of the world as well as the rest of it kind of needs to admit that all of their efforts and the destruction that they did to the economies and the lives of the people in their countries was all in vain. The virus spread everywhere anyway and I believe it is still doing so to this day.

When the government told all the expat community that they had to leave last month I was in a position that I really didn't want to find myself in: I couldn't travel to the nearby countries and I also couldn't legally stay in this one. I spoke to two different agents and while one of them gave me some temporary false hope the end result was the same: There was nothing they could do for me and I either needed to get out or overstay.

One thing that kind of surprised me was the fact that the agent that is kind of employed by the owner of my condo building was actually encouraging us to overstay and that nothing would happen to us provided we don't overstay by more than a year. At that time you will simply face a fine which is a maximum of 20 million VND or around $800.

When you consider the fact that over the past 2 years I have been paying $100 a month for visa extensions you can probably do some quick math and realize that if I do stay for another year illegally, I am actually saving money by not obeying the law.

Of course there is the fear of being "blacklisted" from re-entry to the country but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. At the moment I very much prefer Thailand over Vietnam and there are also a bunch of other countries that I haven't even been to yet.

I don't like breaking the law but at the end of the day that fluffball in the picture above is the main motivator for why I am doing so right now. It doesn't matter to me what the consequences are, there is no chance that I am going to put myself or her in a situation where we will be separated.

It was nearly a year ago when I actually had tickets and made all the expensive preparations to get both of us out of the country only to have Qatar Airline cancel the flight on me at the 11th hour. Since that day, I have not gone through the rigors of all the doggy paperwork that is necessary to transport an animal because if the airline cancels or changes the flight, your paperwork is no longer valid and you have to start the entire process over again.

I will not move from this country until I am assured that I can easily and safely transport both of us out of here.

_{all of the toys need to be guaranteed safe passage as well}

So for the first time in my life I am willfully ignoring immigration law and will continue to do so, probably for many more months. If they do end up blacklisting me because of this, it won't be for a super long period of time and according to people who have been blacklisted in the past, if you REALLY want to get back into Vietnam, the only thing you need to do is get a new passport because they block the name, country, and passport number. It's not like they use biometrics or anything sci-fi like that.

I suppose I could end up regretting this decision, but at least for now, I don't really have any other choice and basically we are not going anywhere until the world or at least this area can come to some consensus about how they are going to handle travel in the waning days of Covid panic.