health check nightmare...

[walbers 1]

Whew....what a circus that was, getting our health check done. I'm a white USC living here in VN...my wife is Chinese living here with me. Never been to Cho Ray hospital. Apparently neither has my driver as he dropped us off at the wrong place......which looked to be just one of maybe 7 or 8 hospitals in that block? Went to a window and managed to get someone to point us around the corner. Went to a modern looking building (silly me, I thought Cho Ray might look nice and modern like FV) but I think that was a dental hospital so they said go down the block more.....finally found it but couldn't find the visa place....someone pointed us down the hall and we ended up at an international clinic that looked promising. The first English I'd seen all day announced foreign passports/permits so I think this is it. Show our appointment letter...get a blank face. We're supposed to have an 8am appointment for which we are now 15 minutes late and my wife is freaking out. Did I mention the crowd of thousands? Many looking deathly ill? A nurse comes by and gives us some forms to fill out. They keep talking to my wife in Vietnamese as I try to explain she's Chinese and can't speak Vietnamese. I get the forms filled out and notice that the nurse keeps saying something about work permit. Uh oh! In exasperation I call my office and get one of my employees on the phone who finally tells me we're in the wrong place. Now that the nurse knows we're not there for a work permit she leads us outside the clinic and says go down there (straight into the crowd of thousands) and turn left. We try to do this and are immediately lost in a dark maze of corridors and sick people on gurneys. I see a doctor and ask him if he speaks English...and thank god...it's good English. He's puzzled for a moment about the visa unit but finally takes me to a door and points and says it's a couple buildings over. Go down this way, turn left and go 2 blocks. OK, sounds simple enough....we do this and end up outside the hospital complex and I walk down a block and realize this can't be right....by this time my wife has broken down into hysterical crying through sheer frustration (this whole process including the two rejections in Beijing has completely soured her on dealing with American bureauacracy) but finally I find a narrow path through the motorbike parking area and we go down that, turn the corner and there it is! So....we finally get started.....everything is going fairly smoothly except that my wife has been holding her pee all morning thinking she needs to give a sample....so she's pretty uncomfortable (by the way, no sample needed so you can pee if you need to). She's getting annoyed that it seems that people are jumping the queue. Finally she gets in....they ask her has she ever had any female problems and she mentions she had a cervical lesion removed about 6 years ago. Well, now they want to see the records on this! Records? We didn't bring any records with us. I thought this was a health check and that they'd do whatever checks were needed. So my wife completely freaks out.....wishing she had just not said anything. I head back to home, a 45 minute slog through a million scooters back to Phu My Hung and then 45 minutes back....getting there right at noon when the doctors break for lunch. So one doctor looks at the records and says...no, not good enough....I want to see one that says you are clear...no problems. Arghhh, that's the one from SOS we did a few months ago where the results were emailed to us...so i don't have a hard copy. Now it's across town to SOS where they print off a copy of the report. In the meantime my wife has broken down sobbing uncontrollably and the female doctor wants to know what's wrong...and my wife, who is so frustrated, says it's just not fair that she's honest and now has to go through all this trouble when probably everyone else comes in and just says no to all the questions and they sail through no problem....she's just too hard on herself. I finally get back at 1pm and it seems this report is OK so they tell her they will call tomorrow and if everything is normal we can pick up the report today. whew...

after that it was on to the vaccinations which went very smoothly....maybe only 10 minutes. I do have a question......what sort of evidence do we show regarding the vaccinations? The only thing they gave us was a schedule of the shots (there are two more) and a receipt.

thanks for reading if you made it this far. If you're planning on trying to find the visa health check office drop me a note and I'll explain it's location....it's not easy to find. Our interview is Nov 5......my god, if we don't get a pink.....

regards

will

[let-it-be 36]

That must have been stressful for your wife. Good luck for the interview!

Here is a suggestion to others that are going to have their medical & interview. Prior to scheduled appointments try to check out where the place is. Trust me, it is a lot easier when you are familiar with the place.

[ScottThuy 140]

The schedule of shots is what shows what she has had vaccinations for. Keep that handy.. its actually good to have an extra copy of it just in case, but that is more of a deal with K-1's than CR1..

[walbers 1]

you know...if it's not one thing...it's another. had my office call Cho Ray this afternoon to find out the status of the health check and they say...oh, we're waiting for the vaccination result. what vaccination result? nobody said anything to us about a vaccination result. we went there...the Dr said you need these shots....my wife got them and we left. nobody told us we were apparently supposed to hang around and get some sort of official paper that said no reaction to the shots and then take that back to Cho Ray! so now I find this out and we have to drive back down to the vaccination place tomorrow morning...get this paper....then go back to the Visa unit and drop it off...then wait for the final report.

sheesh! I tell you....if we get a blue slip on Nov 5 my wife will jump off a high building! LOL

rgds

will

[sweetapple 1]

you know...if it's not one thing...it's another. had my office call Cho Ray this afternoon to find out the status of the health check and they say...oh, we're waiting for the vaccination result. what vaccination result? nobody said anything to us about a vaccination result. we went there...the Dr said you need these shots....my wife got them and we left. nobody told us we were apparently supposed to hang around and get some sort of official paper that said no reaction to the shots and then take that back to Cho Ray! so now I find this out and we have to drive back down to the vaccination place tomorrow morning...get this paper....then go back to the Visa unit and drop it off...then wait for the final report.

sheesh! I tell you....if we get a blue slip on Nov 5 my wife will jump off a high building! LOL

rgds

will

You need the yellow paper (vaccination paper) from vaccination center on 40 Nguyen Van Troi street, Dist. Phu Nhuan

[walbers 1]

You need the yellow paper (vaccination paper) from vaccination center on 40 Nguyen Van Troi street, Dist. Phu Nhuan

well yeah....i just found that out. Nobody told us.....neither of us are Vietnamese nor can we speak the language. my wife is Chinese and everyone here seems to think she's Vietnamese so it's very possible someone said something to her in Vietnamese about getting the yellow paper and she didn't know it. It would have been nice if we had known about this beforehand. rgds, will

[bigdog 376]

Hang in there, sorry you are having issues, keep aggressive and on top of this, good luck. I got lucky as my wife was still in China.

[quann 26]

not to sound harsh but most of the nightmares were self-induce. seems like you guys weren't prepared for anything. hope you do better at the interview.

[walbers 1]

for anyone interested...we went back to the vaccination place where they quickly handed over the missing yellow vaccination record. then on to Cho Ray to the Visa Med Center where the doctor took the yellow card immediately, completed the health record and they very kindly processed the health report this morning rather than making us return in the afternoon. So....all's well that end's well....

regards

will