{"id":1422,"date":"2018-11-08T13:58:29","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T13:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/?p=1422"},"modified":"2018-11-08T13:58:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T13:58:29","slug":"a-little-dong-goes-a-long-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/2018\/11\/08\/a-little-dong-goes-a-long-way\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Dong Goes a Long Way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Besides the paperwork and passport photos i had prepared, Vietnamese Immigration also wants $25 USD. I don&#8217;t have it. <\/p>\n<p>The price of the various visas are posted on the wall, all in US dollars. Now that is just a bit strange. I mean, I was under the impression that Vietnam fought a war to remove US influence? Vietnamese currency is &#8220;dong&#8221; but I don&#8217;t have any of those either.<\/p>\n<p>I ask if they take a credit card? No.<br \/>\nI ask if they have an ATM? No.<\/p>\n<p>They ask if I&#8217;m an idiot for traveling to a foreign country without any money. Okay, they didn&#8217;t actually use those words, but the look pretty much spelled it out.<\/p>\n<p>I tell them I have Thai Baht and they say okay. After some fidgeting around they say 1300 baht will prevent me from being deported. Now, that is a fair bit more than $25 USD, closer to $40, but I&#8217;m in no position to negotiate. <\/p>\n<p>I say okay and give her 1500. She indicates that I&#8217;m good to go, but c&#8217;mon, you&#8217;re already overcharging me, and I&#8217;m going through the motions of pretending not to know, how about at least giving me some change? I loiter with that expectation and eventually she coughs up a 10,000 dong note. Sounds impressive but in reality its not even 50 cents. Commie bitch.<\/p>\n<p>Once again I&#8217;m in no position to argue with the oppressive state. Take my licking and hit the street. Manage to find a money changer, and become a Vietnamese millionaire, withdrawing a cool 2,000,000 dong, so just let it be said, I&#8217;ve got a lot of dong. Lol.<\/p>\n<p>Taxi ride into town only costs me 45,000 dong (or about $2). Hey, a little dong goes a long way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Besides the paperwork and passport photos i had prepared, Vietnamese Immigration also wants $25 USD. I don&#8217;t have it. The price of the various visas are posted on the wall, all in US dollars. Now that is just a bit strange. I mean, I was under the impression that Vietnam fought a war to remove US influence? Vietnamese currency is&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/vietnam-flag.png","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jba6-mW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1424,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422\/revisions\/1424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dennispresiloski.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}