"It's lunchtime," the doorman snapped. "Come back at two."

The afternoon siesta. A delightful custom, we told each other, characteristic of an easygoing people and a refreshing independence from the hurried pace of the modern-day world.

We returned on the dot of two. At three we were reluctantly permitted entry. At four we were allowed to speak to an office boy who was diligently straightening paper clips for no apparent reason. "Mr. Tuan's not here," he said without looking up. "Come back tomorrow."

A busy man, we remarked with admiration, no doubt essential to the smooth operation of the office. We made a note to call ahead.

The next morning we were there when the gates opened, hoping to be allowed to make the acquaintance of the busy Mr. Tuan. He didn't seem overjoyed to see us but was grudgingly pleased with the bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, a small token of our appreciation for his coming efforts on our behalves.

He led us into his office and immediately claimed our passports. His face darkened as he leafed through my provincial extension stamps and read the handwritten caveats and cautions penned in by suspicious officials. I nudged the whisky into a more prominent position on the table.

He closed my passport with an audible snap and rearranged his face into the universal expression of all third-world government officials; half-lidded eyes that could spot a guilty stain on the left wing of a housefly, lips compressed and sagging at the ends. "You must provide copies of your plane tickets," he told us at length, "to prove that you are returning to your home of origin in thirty days."

Very understandable, we assured him, only Jochen wasn't leaving by plane and my ticket was open-ended.

"And," he continued implacably, "official registration forms stamped by every hotel you have frequented since your arrival in Vietnam, signed and countersigned by the manager and owner."

I squeaked a little on that one, thinking of tire shops and sugarcane fields, until Jochen stomped firmly on my foot.

Mr. Tuan returned to his desk and slipped our passports into a drawer in case we should attempt to flee the country without his permission, and handed me a thick sheath of papers. "You must fill out three copies of each form," he announced. "Typed." I ran my eyes down the headings. They were all in Vietnamese. We gathered up our paperwork before he could invent any further requirements and left, promising to return on the morrow with his every wish fulfilled.

The plane ticket was easy. I penciled in the appropriate departure date, photocopied it on a wheezing pre-war copier and touched up the results with a smear of cornstarch. With a few minor corrections, Jochen became eligible for a coach-class flight to America, although upon closer inspection his seat looked a tad crowded with both of us in it.

I next tackled the paperwork, and spent a tedious afternoon battling my way through a convoluted morass of bureaucratic officialese. The first page slyly requested my passport number in six different places in the hopes of catching me in an outright fabrication. Scattered throughout the forms were cleverly worded questions intent on tricking me into revealing several different nationalities and dates of birth. It proceeded like a well-rehearsed interrogation, at first deceptively simple (name? date?), then gently sympathetic (parents deceased? When?), becoming overtly incredulous (if parents deceased, living where?) and ending with a brilliant coup de grace (overt purpose of visit? covert purpose?) designed to take full advantage of several hours of logic deprivation. It was an unmistakable masterpiece of obfuscation, and I made every effort to make my responses equally obscure.

Jochen, meanwhile, had been wrestling with our final obstacle, the nonexistent hotel registration forms. The answer was unexpectedly straightforward. He suggested that we simply approach our present guesthouse owner for a stamp and signature, then change the dates to include our entire stay in Vietnam. Problem solved.

The owner was not impressed. "Of course such a stamp exists," she told us, "but I don't have one." Such luxuries were available only at official foreign hotels, places that were willing to fork over half their foreign revenue to the government. She operated a simple, unofficial pension, had come to an agreement with the local law enforcement agency, and never advertised. That was why she took people like us, she sniffed, cheap travelers who did their laundry in the bathroom sink and found their lodgings through word of mouth. She looked us over suspiciously. If we were having paperwork problems then she would thank us to pack our bags and take ourselves elsewhere until our business was resolved.

We escaped with our room reservations barely intact and retreated to a nearby soup shop to discuss our options. Jochen was by this time reconsidering his plan to visit the Mekong in favor of a quick getaway to user-friendly Malaysia, but misery loves company - I begged him to put off his decision until I had prevailed upon one of the fancier hotels to donate a moment of their stamp's unofficial time and a smear of ink.

I chose the New World Hotel, a $200 a night extravaganza of chandeliers and layered doormen. The staff, who had never before met a white Vietnamese speaker, gathered around. I decided to come clean with my problem, throw myself upon their mercy, and trust to the national addiction for exploiting yet another government-inspired niche market. They commiserated with my predicament, expressed astonishment that so clever a solution could come from anything as foolish as a foreigner, and cheerfully handed over the stamp in return for a crisp five dollar bill. They were happy. I was happy. The government got the paperwork it wanted. Problem solved.

The next morning we returned to the extension office weighed down with photocopies of every aspect of our lives, both real and imagined. I had taken the precaution of falsifying an international driver's license and marriage certificate and felt prepared to meet any reasonable request head on. Mr. Tuan merely frowned, took our papers and a brick-sized stack of local currency and told us to come back in three days to pick up our extensions. It was almost a letdown. We trailed out the door.

Two days later we stopped by to pick up our visas. The extention office gate was locked and the windows shuttered. The office boy eventually responded to the rattling chain by sticking his head out the door and squinting into the sunlight. He approached, flourishing our passports, and handed them to us through the narrow bars. "No visa," he said loudly. "Reject."

"Your kidding," I said, flipping through the pages.

"That's not possible," Jochen managed.

"Reject! Reject!" the young man shouted and waved his hands about in illustration.

Our old visas were due to run out in twenty-four hours. Neither Cambodia nor Laos would accept us on such short notice. I tried pointing this out.

"One day! You leave! Good-bye!" He walked away, still windmilling his arms. We stood behind the gate and stared at his retreating back. The door closed firmly behind him.