top of page
Search

Change of plans

A change is as good as a holiday, that's only if you're on holiday. Right?



We’re not going to Vietnam anymore. Instead we’re off to Phuket, Thailand’s largest island.


Why? Well some of the red tape involved in the current process of getting a visa to get into Vietnam, got in the way. When we first booked the flight to Vietnam, South Africa was seemingly on the e-visa list. And now we’re not. It’s not that we can’t get a visa, we can, we just need to go through a government-recognised travel agent in Vietnam. Yes again, not a problem but for the fact that they are “taking advantage” of the situation, as any good capitalist does. Oh, wait, they’re a socialist republic, well never mind, let's not let exploitation of tourists get in the way of a fast buck.


Travel agents therefore levy a “fee” for doing the visa application for you and then, mostly, insist that you book all of your accommodation and activities through them. That “fee” is around USD450 per person for the visa and 2 nights of accommodation in a middling to average hotel.


  • The tour operator's “visa arrangement fee” for the “approval letter” is around USD25.

  • The fee paid to immigration at the airport is USD20.

  • A reasonable hotel goes for about USD60 per night.

  • All-in-all not an unreasonable USD210. For two people.


Yet the tour operators are charging USD450 per person. Someone is making USD690. Love to be in on that margin.


Many tour operators insist that you book all of your activities and accommodation through them which means that whats on offer is a hotel or B&B, which is not how we are rolling. A hotel doesn’t suit our nomad / work / lifestyle. So it became a matter of looking at the situation from all angles. We have the sunk cost of the airfare. What is the cost to change the flights vs the USD450 per person “visa” cost? Where could we easily go without a visa? What’s there that we haven’t seen and experienced and can we work from there? Is it near to the next place we’d like to visit? What are the airfares for that leg? It became a matter of choosing the lesser evil and more comfortable option.


It was also important to keep in mind that flights around the world are FUBAR right now so the prudent thing is making choices that have a lesser prospect of being upended. LOL how do we even know!



Suddenly we’re having to research a country we hadn’t considered or researched to yet. Where to stay / dive/ work, all takes time and effort. We say we’ve been ‘lucky’ with our accommodation finds thus far but actually, we have invested significant time in investigation of the options. How do you decide where to stay? We estimate it’s taken around 40 hours of investigation to find each place to stay. Not only are we looking for a list of minimum requirements (insert pic of List) we’re also eyeing out:- - How far the nearest grocery store is because we cook our own meals regularly. - What local food stores and markets are nearby because we want to immerse ourselves in the culture and minimise western food. - What are the trusted dive centres and how close is it to a good one? - Do we need transport or can we walk to where we want to be?

What’s the cost of the changing travel plans?

Our travel agent has been a gem and she’s just as discombobulated by all the visa and flight changes as we have been. The cost of the changes have not only been financial, but also time-wise. The time cost of changing our destination to Phuket will be around 10 additional hours in transit. Not quite what we’d hope for:

  • Trou Aux Biches to Port Louis

  • Port Louis to Dubai

  • Dubai to Hanoi

  • Hanoi to Bangkok

  • Bangkok to Phuket

And that’s not even taking into account the wait time per connecting flight.

It’s about 22 hours in the air or a taxi without the in-transit hours in between.


It is going to be interesting to see how @IngridLotze copes. She doesn’t do well with no sleep. How do you cope with the uncertainty and change? We’ve been asked how we stay positive and buoyed when things don’t go our way. We have different coping mechanisms: @ingridlotze uses an “attitude of platitude”. And it works for her. At one time or another these platitudes were not trite, stale remarks, they were statements aimed at quelling social, emotional, or cognitive unease and to many, were helpful and meaningful when first said ~ as they are to Ingrid now. Her top three platitudes help remind her that:

  • Sometimes bad things lead to good things

  • Whatever will be, will be

  • It doesn't matter what you're doing, as long as you're having fun.


And then if more mental capacity is needed Ingrid pulls on:

  • Sacrifice today for a better tomorrow

  • All's well that ends well

  • Acting your age is for old people


In this case sometimes bad things lead to good things is totally applicable as not going to Vietnam for 3 months, travelling North to South, has opened up three months of other positive possibilities:-

  • Thailand wasn’t in the plans just yet as we had other countries we wanted to go to first, but we’ve never been to Phuket and the diving is highly rated.

  • The easiest way to get into Laos is from Thailand.

  • Seeing that we can change plans opens up our thinking to new places and now possibilities like India.

@gavinmoffat uses his innate inner stoicism. Not the “stiff upper lip” kind that he inherited from his British parents, but the kind that he has nurtured and grown over time through personal development work.


To put sudden changes into perspective he uses this bit of Stoic wisdom from Epictetus “....we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen”.


We’re not going to Vietnam, we have to change plans and book new flights and accommodation urgently, that’s a good thing and really, these changes are just about something we wished for, happening at a different time.



---------------------------------

@ingridlotze & @gavinmoffat

---------------------------------

Two individuals. Wife and husband. Business partners. Adventurers. Scuba divers. #NomadWorkLifestyle. Luggage fits 7 t-shirts each.

---------------------------------

 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All
The blanding of the world

We took a walk down a side street of Seoul South Korea recently, which is in itself another whole article on its own as you don’t walk...

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page