In-Country Support: What Can You Expect?

For as long as adoptions have been reopen (and likely long before that), parents have shared experiences about their time in-country. Likely those of us lucky enough to run into other parents in Vietnam who use different agencies probably notice major differences in how the in-country experience is handled by various agencies.

What can you expect? The answer depends on who your agency is.

I will share my experience not becuase it is the “right one” or because I mean to endorse the agency I used but because it is the experience I know most intimately. If you have already adopted, it can be used as a basis for comparison. If you haven’t adopted yet, I will follow up with some questions you can ask your agency or prospective agency so you will know what to expect. I hope others will leave comments – anonymously or not  – sharing their own in-country support experience.

We were given tentative TA 17 days before we needed to leave and this was firmed up and our G&R was scheduled 7 days prior to travel. I made my own International flight reservations although our agency handled the visas.

When we landed at the airport, a driver and our agency support person was there to meet us. They loaded our luggage into the van and took us to our hotel. They checked us in and made sure we were settled. They told us the itinerary for the foreseeable future – G&R in two days, be ready early in the morning, pick up is at 8am. The drive will be 2 hours in an agency van to the orphanage where we will spend the day with our baby and then go to our G&R in the afternoon and return home by evening. This is exactly how things go. Except the parts we screw up becuase we always screw something up. We forgot some important piece of paper for the G&R which caused all kinds of chaos for a bit but our agency totally handled it, they didn’t even break a sweat which is more than I can say for us. I distinctly remember sitting there thinking “will they make us leave without our baby and reschedule for days or weeks down the road?” but our agency made it a non-issue and didn’t even make us feel like the idiots we were making ourselves feel like. We sign lots of papers and things are explained to us but we are woozie with the excitement of new parenthood so I hope we don’t need to recite the info back later.

The next day our agency swings by in the morning to drop off a cell phone. Our agency provides these loaner phones while we are in-country so they can contact us at a moment’s notice. They do not expect us to keep locked in our hotel room. They do not expect us to buy our own cell phone for a 2 week stay. They also tell us to expect to go to our first Embassy appointment the next day. We ask if there is anything we should know or expect and they say don’t worry about it, it will be fine, it is no big deal. We aren’t given an extensive breakdown of information to study like other agencies nor are we told what to say like some parents report.

We go to our first Embassy appointment the next day. Our driver picks us up, our agency personnelle goes with us and does all the talking at the window. We go into the little room, we get asked the standard questions on the list, they take our contact info and tell us they’ll call when they have scheduled our final appointment, we come out. Our agency guy talks again and later explains that he has the contact info changed to the agency so we won’t hear from the Embassy, he will, so we don’t need to worry about sitting around our hotel for a week waiting on that call. Our agency takes us to get passport pictures taken. No clue where, no clue what it costs. They take care of it including the passport application submission. They tell us that we likely will not get passports back for several days and, until then, to enjoy ourselves. They arrange water puppet tickets and pass those along. Otherwise we are on our own. We shop, we hang out at the pool, we do a little touring through our hotel. We take expensive cab rides into the Old Quarter.

Our agency calls and says our passport is done 6 days later and that we have a SOS physical appointment later that afternoon and they will be by to pick us up. They pick up the passport for us and take us to our appointment which they pay for and stay for. They stick around with us to wait for the report from the doctors so they can use it to schedule our final visa appointment. They take us back to our hotel. It’s a Thursday and the agency doesn’t seem to think they can get us our final appointment the next day but we stand by.

Friday we are told that we will be able to have our final interview on Monday, they tell us a time they will pick us up and Monday rolls around and it goes just like that. We go, do our Embassy thing for a few minutes, arrange to get Addy’s visa on the early side on our way to the airport the next day and leave. Our agency takes us to the airline office to help us rearrange our tickets. Turns out we don’t have the confirmation ticket needed – its back at the hotel. Our agency offers to run it back for us so we don’t have to make the trip. They take care of it, leaving us to enjoy our last day in Vietnam.

On our final day our agency guy calls to say that there is no need to go pick up the entry visa, he did it for us while he was there for other business already. He’ll pick us up for the airport later and does so. We say our goodbyes and go home.

So that’s the long and short of my own personal experience in Vietnam. I can tell you that I was approached several times in-country by parents using other agencies who knew we were a bit further along in the process and wanted help or assistance and we couldn’t help them because we had no first-hand experience thanks to our amazing agency support. How do you schedule an SOS appointment? Where do you go to submit the passport app? What do you need to know for the Embassy interview? How do you fill out xyz paperwork? NOT A CLUE!  Our agency did this all for us. And perhaps there are families who would not be at all confortable with releasing this amount of control over the process. Me? I was all for it! This freed us up to focus on our new family and enjoy the last few days in Vietnam without worrying about handling all the red tape and bureaucracy.

How can you know what to expect in Vietnam? Here are a few questions to ask past families from your agency, or the agency itself:

1)Are G&Rs scheduled prior to travel? How firm is this date?

2) Will all in-country transportation (including in-country flights, if necessary) be provided to adoption-related appointments?

3) Will I be expected to make my own appointments? If so, which ones will I need to make and which ones will the agency handle?

4) Will an agency representative be present for all adoption -related appointments including the G&R, passport application submission, both Embassy appointments, SOS visit, etc?

5) Will the agency provide any formal activities for our travel group such as agency dinners, tourism, tickets to local attractions, etc? If not, does the agency routinely provide recommendations for tour guides & local attractions on request?

6) Will the agency provide cell phones? How will I know when important appointments are scheduled?

7) Will there be a direct line to the facilitator available to me should I have questions or concerns?

8 ) Will the agency help me with health concerns should they arise for the baby? What about for myself or my husband?

9) Will the agency help me book my hotel and provide transportation to and from the airport? If the hotel is substandard or proper accomodations are not available for our new baby, will the agency help to arrange a solution? What about rescheduling airline tickets? Will the agency help with that?

10) Will the agency require or encourage us to leave our new child with a babysitter at any time during our trip? Is it ok if we opt not to do this?

For prior agency families:

10) Did you experience any paperwork errors? How were they handled by your agency? Was a resolution reached? How long did it take, if so?

11)Did you experience any delays? Was your travel date delayed, changed or canceled at the last minute? Was your G&R when it was originally scheduled to be? What about your Embassy appointments?

12) Did you experience any difficulties at your first Embassy appointment? If so, what were the difficulties related to? Did the Embassy ask any questions that were not specifically on the standard list in front of them?

This list is just the beginning of questions that parents can and should ask to get a clear idea of what to expect with their particular agency. No one should ever expect that things will go like clockwork in Vietnam. You are dealing with two different governments half a world away on 12 hour time differences. Things happen. But knowing how your particular agency handles travel and what other parents have already experienced before you will help you to prepare yourself or even make a different agency choice entirely.