Vietnam Trip, Day 14 | My Departure from Vietnam and Why Communist Countries suck!

On my final day in Vietnam I had gotten up late (09:30 a.m.) and finished packing my stuff together and thought, I just had to visit the Sushi restaurant again where I eat at the evening before. The restaurant is called “The Sushi Bar“and is located in District 1. I can highly recommend this Sushi Bar if you’re ever in Saigon.

It was here where I had the best Sushi of my life and realized what crappy Sushi we actually get in Europe. They even had Matsusaka beef on the menu! Even though this was on my long-term wish list, to taste Kobe or Matsusaka beef, I chose not to, because I wanted to try it in Japan. It was tempting though, despite the price of over 30 USD for 150 grams of beef. But considering the way these cows are raised and treated, well worth it in my humble opinion. For those who haven’t heard of Kobe or Matsusaka beef, be sure to check out the Wikipedia articles that I linked above or watch the videos below.

After my some excellent sushi, for which only paid about 10 USD, including a big portion of sushi, soup, dessert and three cups of green tea, it was time to go to the Ho Chi Minh City airport and fly back to Hanoi. I was booked on a Jetstar flight and was already worried that they weren’t as reliable as Vietnam airlines, because I’ve heard and read negative reviews about Jetstar’s reliability. And so my flight was delayed together with another Jetstar flight. Murphy’s Law had stricken again – “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. I guess I wasn’t flying Jetstar again Albeit the delay, I had 3 hours to spare on my arrival at the Hanoi airport.

I took this time to exchange the rest of my Vietnamese Dong into Euro that I still had left in my wallet. So I went to the next currency exchange booth within the airport and what followed was a prime example of why communist countries truly suck. The guy behind the counter asked me for my passport, which was fair enough, as for most things in Vietnam, such as booking or staying at a hotel, they requires you to present your passport in order to complete the transaction. But that wasn’t all he needed. He also requested my plane ticket. Looking somewhat confused, I complied and handed over my plane ticket with which I just arrived from Saigon. As he took a look at the ticket details he said that he can’t use this ticket because it’s a domestic flight. I then asked him if he would exchange my money if I presented him with my ticket to Korea. He nodded his head, at which point I replied back that I’ll just exchange my Vietnamese Dong in Korea where they make currency exchanges a lot less painful and left the counter.

Why on earth would anyone need a passport AND a boarding ticket leaving the country in order to give back local currency?! That’s why I hate communist countries – they don’t have any sense of logic, just make up mediocre laws, create lots of bureaucracy, tax the hell out of their citizens so the state can ultimately employ itself! [End of rant!]