30 Day Challenge - Day One

I have been having troubles with my phone ever since I arrived in Vietnam. The first time I tried to buy a phone card, I spent 100.000 VND ($5) only to discover I had bought from the wrong company. My charger also broke (one of the prongs is still stuck in the outlet.  I should probably tell my landlord…), and I spent 2 days with an uncharged phone before finding a replacement. But my biggest problem has been plaguing me since shortly after I arrived in Vietnam and was not solved until today.

From what I can gather, it seems that most people use pay as you go phones here (similar to Panama), and my phone is no exception. My phone plan, however, was set so that my money would expire two weeks after I put more money on it. I was getting very frustrated with this because I did not enjoy spending 50.000 VND($2.50) on phone cards every fourteen days.

I asked other expats about this problem, but none of them had a solution for me. I asked some of my students only to be told that the only way to fix the problem was to buy a new SIM card, but that I would lose all the money I had on my account (plus I wasn’t sure if my contacts would transfer over to a new card and I didn’t want to lose all of those). I put off figuring out a permanent solution until today, the last day before my account would reach its deadline.

I was contemplating this problem today as I was proctoring my students’ midterm exam and finally had the good sense to pray (why it took me so long to figure that one out, I don’t know.). I asked God to please send me someone with the time and Vietnamese ability to help me get the problem fixed. Then I proceeded to continue worrying about it for the next hour.

When the exam was over, I returned to the teachers’ office to give the exam papers to the teacher in charge. While we were waiting for the exams from the other classes, she asked me what my plans for the rest of the day were. I told her I was done with classes for the day, but I was going to try to get my phone fixed. She asked me what the problem was, so I explained it to her. Then she offered to go with me to get the problem straightened out! We ended up having to go to two different stores (the first was not a mobifone store), but we finally went to the right place. It took about 5 minutes for her to explain the problem and for them to change the deadline from every 2 weeks to every 2 months. I even got to keep most of the money I had on my account!