Map of Travels

Friday, May 28, 2010

Chinese Visa

This one was a little tougher than the Vietnam visa. China actually wants you to come into their consulate to get the visa. You can have a travel agency do it for you, but unless you're booking a package with them, you're looking at a pretty hefty markup, not to mention the original cost of $130 for the visa itself. Thankfully I live a short train ride from NYC, and was able to go to the consulate myself. I left the application, photo copy of passport, and the passport itself there for a week, and one week later got my travel visa for my trip to Beijing! As for what to do if you don't live near a consulate..... no idea. They seem pretty strict about not doing mail visas. I would just suck it up and pay a travel agent. The prices I saw were $200-$260 for the agent to do it. Not cheap, but I am really looking forward to seeing China, so definitely worth it!

Final Relaxed and Home

Sorry I haven't updated in a month guys. Graduation and everything else was absolute insanity. But I'm back and I only have 23 DAYS TIL THE TRIP!!! I'm freaking out a little bit. Anyway this is gonna be a big post, so I'll cut into three. I thought I would update you guys on my gear, visas, and hotels. First the gear.

I managed to get a $200 backpack for only $100 thanks to eBags. High Sierra TR102 Railpass. Main Pack is 3050 cubic inches. Day Pack is 976 inches. Adjustable shoulder straps. And metal zippers, for better locking. Heres a pic:



Your trusty computer nerd is also bringing a nice little solid state, linux netbook so he can stay in touch with everyone. Dell is the only one who provides this kind of netbook, which is weird cause I feel like theres a market for this. And of course he is jailbreaking his iPhone so he can
twitter his GPS coordinates as often as possible. This way I can make a map of my whole trip at the end. Here's a picture of the netbook.



Finally I also found a $150 digital camera for $70. 10.1 Megapixels 3x zoom and takes AA batteries. The batteries are much better than charged in an emergency. Here's a pic of that as well.


Coming up after the break, visas and hotels.

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