Saigon Diaries Part 1 - Favor

One week has passed since I came back from the lovely city of Saigon and now I attempt to write a post that I hope will justify the richness of my experience pre, post, and during my stay there. I will try to organize my thoughts through sub posts which describe relevant factors that made my visit significantly worthwhile. Here we go!

Favor
Before any memory-gratifying recollection of thought, I wanna give credit where credit is due. This entire experience will not be possible without God using my work to send me outside my beloved Philippines. Citrix, the cloud-computing company that enable workstyles, being the solutions that I handle in my current position in WSI, organized an annual partner bootcamp in Ho Chi Minh, VN on April 2-4 (Wednesday to Friday) which encourages its distributors (like WSI) and authorized resellers from all over ASEAN to gather and be unified and aligned with their business strategies and roadmap. And so WSI sends me with a Per Diem premium that served as my pocket money which is a big help in sustaining me as I extended until April 6 (Sunday). Citrix has covered for the participants' accommodations in New World Hotel Saigon while WSI paid for my travel expenses so I'm very thankful to God that he provided for this adventure in which I spent no single cent! :)

Aerial view of Ho Chi Minh

I entered the year of 2014 with a reluctant faith goal of being out of the country for the first time! I've never really attempted to pray for that knowing that I have a bond caused by my DOST Scholarship. For those who didn't know, DOST Scholars like me are tied to work inside the Philippines for the number of years in which the agency paid for our studies. So in my case, that's 5 years, and to date, I still have around two years to serve. That means our names were listed in the immigration blacklist and before we can leave the country for business or leisure, we had to secure a Bureau of Immigration Clearance and a promisory note that we would indeed come back. So even if I had no plans of working abroad, I was limited to not dreaming to leave the country until the time is due because of the hassle of securing government documents! But not anymore! When I received the good news that I will be sent out, I chose to trust God instead of worry that I might be stopped from the immigration, because if this opportunity is from the Lord, he has already paved the way! I've read some blogs from DOST scholars who claims that the travel ban for us has been banned and that we were no longer on the blacklist... I can confirm this myself!

So on the immigration desk, I was questioned since this is my first time to leave the country, therefore no stamps in my passport yet. I was asked by the officer to present the conference invitation and company recommendation. Inspite of that critical moment which can either make or break the whole trip, I had the peace showering all over me knowing that God is beside me and will not let me down :) I didn't have the 2nd document that they were looking for but I happened to bring reluctantly my contract with WSI which convinced the officers to let me through! It was a deep sigh and a deep gratitude that entailed... voila! The first ever stamp in my passport! :D

My cute and friendly seatmate :)

Some other mini-favors that I God sent my way were being able to seat on a window side with a Russian family beside me. I realized that not all whites can speak English straight! It's a favor because it's such an experience to speak to people representing a different society :)

Continue reading:
Saigon Diaries Part 2 People
Saigon Diaries Part 3 Food
Saigon Diaries Part 4 Events
Saigon Diaries Part 5 Places and Experience