last night i had a shnitty and drinks with Barra, sales rep from my all time favourite touring company. in my first week he whisked me away for coffee we talked shit and exchanged travel stories. i took a liking to him straight away, and he soon made a smooth transition from “industry pal” to real life “OH MY GOD BARRA IVE HAD THE WORST DAY GET ME DRUNK AND LISTEN TO ME WHINGE” friend. he kind of made the really good point that i probably need to haul arse and get my visas done BEFORE i leave the country – which is an incredibly valid point. cue drunken googling and endless meandering tripadvisor posts and no solid answers.
i know the visa struggles, i foolishly decided to apply for my Indian visa in Cambodia because “it only costs $50 there instead of $100 here.” any stingy traveler will relate. what ensued was perhaps one of the most frustrating 3 days of my life, but easily one of my proudest moments. the first day in the visa office, i sat around with a bunch of other travellers in an eerily frigid room (which looked exactly like a diningroom, not a waiting room in a consulate, but anyhow) unsure of exactly what is going on. whispers filter round – “he’s a nightmare to deal with” “his visa was denied cause he used the wrong pen” “a woman who has lived in india for 15 years was just denied cause her marriage certificate was in turkish” maybe it was true, maybe it was traveller-lore, either way, for the first 8 hours of this ordeal, nothing. happened. every hour so i’d leave for a cigarette (sorry dad) and ask at the front desk what was going on – “computer down madam, system in india, you wait”. by the end of the day, nothing had happened and we were sent home. day two was much of a muchness. my girlfriends hated phnom penh so headed down to kampot – i stayed by myself. a few people gave up their plans to travel to india, few more people joined us in the dining room.
by the third day in the dining room, the system was running, one by one we were called up to submit our visa forms. the cute german couple got rejected first and left, told their form was incomplete. people kept coming back into the room, all being rejected. we realised that all of us had the same error on our computer generated form. when i went to speak to him myself, i was told i couldn’t submit the application without the form fully complete. the form couldn’t be fully completed on their online visa system, and the office was in india so we had no idea when they would fix it. we were told it could be days, maybe even a week, which didn’t exactly work for my life plans. there was nothing he could do and we would all have to suffer and keep coming back every day with new applications to check.
i walked back into the dining room boiling with raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage. i single handedly used my boiling rage to stir up the rage of every other frustrated backpacker who had sat in the fucking dining room for 3 days straight. the 15 of us stormed down to the visa counter. i started banging on the counter with my fists and yelling some shit or other. visa man relented. backpackers win. indian visas for erryone (side note: in his last ditch effort to overthrow me, he did only issue me with a one month indian visa, when the standard is 6. you win some you lose some)
back to the issue at hand (much like my life, my blog will probably be constantly punctuated by asides about india, but you’ll get over it) i planned to leave sydney on the 1st of may, but with china and russian visas unable to be processed in time i may have to push my trip back slightly. i’m considering cutting out indonesia all together and starting in malaysia, focusing mainly on vietnam and china, rather than spreading myself too thin. i dont know i guess i just need to get this visa crap processed and then i’ll figure it out?
i’ve used a company called vodkatrain for the trans mongolian, i’m doing their genghis khan trip which is 14 days and starts in beijing, ends in moscow. i am so fucking excited i could jump out of my skin. 4 nights on a train, what the fuck have i signed myself up for?
Laters Holly 