Knowing that I made plans with Moon’s family to take a holiday off the coast of Southern Vietnam starting July 8th, it was important that Moon and I made a full 100 percent effort to submit the local government outstanding documents required for her Canadian Student Visa Application. We had to venture on my motorbike downtown to the Ministry of Justice to pick up the Vietnamese version of Moon’s criminal Background check document and find a qualified notary to translate it into English for the Canadian immigration officials based in Ho Chi Minh City. Moon has requested the express services for this specific document as normally it would take three weeks for them to prepare it. With some “greasing the wheels” money, we managed to obtain the document in last than one week. We hit a dead-end when we both found out that the government recently outlawed all the private notary clinics in Vietnam forcing local people to go through the official government channels to have these documents notarized. Once again after some heavy searching, Moon managed to find a place in the city and she requested the “express greasing the wheels service” so we can have it completed as fast as we can. We just don't want to wait for a long time for the visa because every day spent in Vietnam means a day less preparing for school and work in September of 2007.
I hope that the Canadian immigration officials will not be as busy this summer with the applications so hopefully the processing time for Moon's visa will be smooth and we both can leave before the end of this month.
