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!

Visa Visa Visa

This week has found me being pretty lazy. I gave my project defense Tuesday, and have tried to relax a little since then. I have most of my Vietnam visa setup. Picture taken, form filled out. Now I just have to get the certified check and send it in. Not too bad. The Chinese visa is worse, I have to go into New York City when I get home and spend the whole day getting that one. Hopefully that will be the only visas I need. Meh. A boring post but 58 days until I leave. Very excited!

Visa Problems

Originally I was hoping for online forms for requesting a visa. Unfortunately, none of the countries I'm visiting allow this. I need tourist visas for China and Vietnam, and a transit visa for Russia. The Chinese and Russian visas aren't much of a problem, since NYC has consulates for both. However, the Vietnamese only have a UN mission in NYC. Their embassy in DC is too far away, and their consulate is apparently in San Francisco. Fortunately, the embassy does mail in visas, so it looks like I'll have to do that for Vietnam, and in person visa for China and Russia. Kind of a pain, but should all work out. Everyone else is recommending I hire a travel agent to do this. I could do that but there's the problem of me being broke. Meh.