I may have a problem...

I picked up my passport from the Viet Nam embassy this morning after checking out the new stamp, came the quick realization that I may have a problem.

No, not with getting into (or out of) Viet Nam; that's all set.

My problem is that most of these countries like to use two visa pages for a single entry visa (or at least for the first single entry visa). You see, one page is used for the actual visa and then at the port of entry, the immigration officials like to use the page immediately adjacent to the visa => two pages. Well, because of their practices, I'm down to three pairs of available adjacent pages.

The first, and more obvious, problem is that depending on how finicky these countries want to get, I could potentially be in a situation where I may only be able to get three more visas before having to renew my passport - much earlier than its expiry date in 2012. The second, and potentially much bigger, problem is that if I have to renew my passport, this means I also need to get a new US student visa which in turn could screw up my future work authorization. The period of time between the granting of my new student visa and law school graduation may end up being too short to qualify for the oh-so-important OPT. Argh!!

Well, I'm going to see if I can try to convince the immigration officials to only stamp my passport on pages that already have stamps but still have space on the pages... hopefully that won't piss them off too much and they'll still let me in the country despite my high maintenance requests. That or I'll be forced to only visit places where I won't require a visa... problem is those places are few and far in between thanks to the nonexistent efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas.