Back in the 'S-t-a-n

I arrived last night, safe and sound, after a longish day of traveling, and now I’m trying to figure out if there’s actually anything substantive I can do in the few days I have here. Besides do work for the Vietnam project, that is. The first thing I’m going to do is the legal framework for our resettlement plan in Vietnam, because that has to be done soon. But in terms of what to do for this project, my local counterpart hasn’t returned a single e-mail of mine, so since she’s been so incommunicado, I don’t quite know what to do. Plus, I’m back on a project where I’m “unofficial”, so basically I can’t do anything here without some guidance. But that’s okay, I’ll figure something out.

Mostly, I feel like I’m here to pack up my stuff and say goodbye. Which is actually okay, to be honest. I’ve got a lot of personal errands to run today, like taking pictures of the hospital my dad built, going to the supermarket so I have food for the next few days (sadly, mango season is over), going to the tailor to see if they can copy my favorite pair of pants in the next three days with the fabric I bought in Vietnam (kind of low on the priority list, but I still want to try), and assorted stuff like that, so it feels like it could be a long afternoon. But I’m going out to dinner with Lois tonight, which will be fun.

My journey here from Vietnam was fairly uneventful, I checked out of the hotel and made it to the airport in plenty of time. The plane from Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok was really full, owing to the presence of, not one, not two, but three tour groups on my flight. This was obvious for several reasons. First of all, they were all wearing matching shirts and baseball caps. Second of all, the all moved as one solid mass of people. And third of all, they all moved as one solid mass, following a very loud guy carrying a flag that matched the shirts and baseball caps. I also saw a few other tour groups over the course of my five hour layover in Bangkok International Airport. It’s actually quite a nice airport, but the only place where I could obtain reading material was in the duty free shops. It was a new experience, having to show someone my passport and sign three different forms just to buy some chick magazines and a Kinder Bueno. (Mmm…Kinder Bueno…) But for long layovers, you can get dayrooms in the airport (presumably it’s like a hotel room where you can chill out in something other than a plastic chair), you can get a massage or go to a beauty salon, all kinds of stuff. And as a tip, I really like both Thai Airlines and Cathay Pacific – the food is good (Thai serves…well, Thai food. Although, to quote Friends, they probably just call it “food”), there’s a decent amount of leg room, and the service is really good. I’ve actually had decent luck with airlines on this trip in general, which has been nice, because I’ve been on some long hauls.

So, uh…I pulled a muscle right near my shoulder blade (deltoid? Trapezius? I’m not sure.) trying to heft my carry-on into the overhead bin on my first flight, because it was just that heavy… To be honest, since it still really hurts, I don’t find it to be all that amusing at the moment, but I will soon enough. A preliminary attempt to start packing up last night and this morning indicates that I might actually be able to get everything back with me – although I need to buy another luggage lock, since I have an extra bag. So that was a very unexpected surprise! I’m still chucking stuff I don’t want to bring back, but it’s mostly clothes that I brought with me that I should have chucked a long time ago anyway. In essence, I’m just starting to clean out my closets a little early, that’s all.

I’ve noticed something – it’s really easy for me to tell when Hamid has absolutely no clue what I’m saying to him. I’ll ask him a question, and he’ll just quietly say “ohh…”, and fade off into silence. It’s the only time that he speaks where I can’t hear the exclamation mark at the end of his sentences. I still don’t think he’s quite clear on the fact that I’ve been in Vietnam for the last six weeks, but that’s okay, I guess he doesn’t have to be.

So now I’m sitting here in my salwar kameez, distracted in much the same way I was on my last day in Vietnam, thankful that today is only a half day in the office. I’m really excited to think that I’ll be home in 11 days, and I’m also really excited that I’ll be in LONDON in only four days! These things are not helping me to concentrate. The lack of any kind of guidance as to what I should do here in these couple days is also a contributing factor. The only thing my colleague (who isn’t here at the moment) told me to do was something that I’d done a couple of months ago and sent to her for feedback. Well, I never got any feedback from her, and now I know why, I suppose. Hard to give feedback on something you haven’t read. Grr…

Okay, Darth has officially irritated the crap out of me. I just got an e-mail he sent to my boss, among others, talking about a workshop we’re trying to set up in Vietnam. Mind you, he was gone for the last day I was there, and was generally in his own little world, so he didn’t have a really clear idea of what I was doing, despite me telling him many times. But he wrote that, now that the senior experts are there, things were starting to progress. Never mind the fact that D and I, junior though we are, were working really hard with no available data for the last few weeks, that we both actually managed to get a lot done, and that the old PM was essentially no help in doing anything technical because he knew he was leaving. Darth may not have even thought about how it sounded, but to downplay what D and I were doing and any progress we made on our own feels like such a slap in the face. Why, oh why, do people suck so much? But there’s no way for me to say anything about it over e-mail without sounding petulant. I suppose I’ll just have to talk to my boss when we’re both back at the same time. (End of the month, maybe?)

I have determined the benchmark for when it’s time for me to look into a career change. I was talking to one of my colleagues in Vietnam and said something about seeing other parts of the country or exploring the city or something like that, and hoping that I could make more time for it if I came back. He indicated that he wasn’t very interested in those things and said “well, after a while, you just want to go there, get the job done, and go home.” Now, one of the biggest perks of this job is getting the see the world as part of your work. There are things about the travel, like the logistics of it, like being away from home for long periods of time, that are really hard – but it’s still a totally amazing opportunity. So, if you no longer appreciate the opportunity for which you’re making all these sacrifices, doesn’t something seem wrong with that picture? Maybe it’s just me.