Leaving Home, at the Qantas Club

Well this is it everyone.

We've packed up the house, spoken to Mum and Nanna, patted the dogs and gave them a scratch on the belly, packed our travel bags and now we are at the airport waiting for the plane to take us away.....

It's been *a lot* of work to get to this point, but we can put our hands on our hearts and say yes we are ready. The last week has been pretty crazy as we had to actually finish packing up our stuff and leave the house for Nicole in some sort of reasonable state. It took 2 trips to the tip (junk), 2 trips to the King of Seconds (electronic junk - $60 total) and 4 trips to St Vincents (clothing junk), not to mention the 4 car loads of stuff that went to Albury Thanks Anne and John!, the 3 boxes of stuff that we shipped to Steve in the UK and the 100 or so boxes that we crammed into the shed.

So that's what we've been doing, basically itemising everything that we own, deciding if it is worth keeping and then trying to look after it for the duration. Of course there's also the never ending handyman jobs at home that saw me putting up 2 shelves for Nicole at 7:20 this morning, and then nicking down to the Hardware shop to buy a rivet gun so I could finish of the guttering we put up last weekend. And then yesterday I had to unblock our stormwater drain as well. All the while Michelle was tirelessly packing packing packing packing. But now we are ready, at the aiport and boarding in 25 minutes.

What a great day!

There's a couple of pretty exciting days ahead of us as tomorrow evening we will be in Siam Reap and then on Saturday we'll be at Angkor Wat - keep posted for the photos and stories of our adventures!

Travelling Stresses in Asia - Aquiring Visas

Weeeelllll we are almost good to go. The house is packed (largely), the lovely Nicole has moved in and assumed control of the dogs and the house and all we need now are our passports containing the relevant authority to enter the countries we intend to travel to.

Right.

To Recap; our trip visits the following countries

1. Thailand
2. Cambodia
3. Vietnam
4. Laos
5. China
6. Kyrgyzstan
   
7. Uzbekistan
8. Russia
9. Finland
10. United Kingdom

Now Michelle and I are both Australian and I also hold an passport from the Irish Republic, so the travel through Asia is on our Australian passports and the work in the UK will be on my Irish passport which entitles Michelle to a EEA (European Economic Area) Family Permit - check out http://www.bia.homeoffice.gov.uk/eucitizens/rightsandresponsibilites for the details.

So when we initially planned this trip we thought, you know, we are Australian citizens, and we'd both travelled overseas before for extended periods without any dramas, and we're entitled to the EEA family permit so it shouldn't be all that hard? Right?

Well. You can't apply for a visa more than 90 days prior to the date of arrival pretty much anywhere. So there's the first constraint. Then if, perchance, you are travelling to a country that requires you to obtain a visa prior to arrival then you may well need to apply for your visa in your country of residence (Russia, since October 2007) . So that makes it pretty hard to actually visit that country without some outside help.

Out of the 10 countries listed above only 3 don't require pre-placed visa's in our passports (Thailand, Laos and Finland). So here's what we did:

We are doing 2 tours, the first around Cambodia and Vietnam and the second through China, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Out of these 5 countries. the tour companies organise the visas for Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, so for the rest of them we were on our own.

Michelle sussed out all the requirements for South East Asia and China on night shift one night so we more or less knew what was in store there. After some plotting Project and a couple of Calendars we worked out the dates, order of priority and country specific processing times and requirements. And here they are:

1. Thailand - only there 2 days and the stamp your passport at immigration for free. Easy
   
2. Cambodia - they have an eVisa system that you apply through online and just print out the forms and make sure you have them with you. Cheap, fast and easy. You just need a JPG scan of your passport and they send it within 48 hours. But, and there is always a but, you can only use eVisa issues visas at certain places, also depending on whether you are entering or exiting.
   
3. Vietnam - filled out the form from the website and mailed it and our passports with the AU$70 fee to Canberra. It was back within 2 days
   
4. Laos - provided you enter at certain places (Vientiane airport, Luang Prabang airport, Friendship bridge from Thailand and a couple of others) they issue it at immigration control. You just need $45 and 2 photos and apparently it's quite fast.
   
5. China - We will be in China for 36 days. 30 day tourist visas are pretty straightforward to get, however since March 2008 they've gone a bit Olympics crazy and wont extend single entry visas past 30 days or issue Double Entry visas at all. I'm assured by the embassy staff we can extend the visa once we are in China but you never know until you actually have it...
   
6. Kyrgyzstan - the tour company organises this but they need a form filled out
   
7. Uzbekistan - again the tour company organises this and not only do they need a form but also a letter from your employer.. why?
   
8. Russia - this is a rort. To get a visa to Russia you need Visa Support. This is a letter from an accredited Russian tourist agency stating you are travelling to Russia for the purpose of tourism and you are staying somewhere in Russia and that you are ok with them. Going through a travel agency this would probably be organised for you but to do it yourself you can use a service like http://waytorussia.net who do it in about 48 hours for US$30 a person. Once you have the Visa support (which consists of two forms) you can apply directly to the embassy with the form off the web, however since October 2007 Russian embassy's will only issue visas in your country of residence. So that's a good restriction to be aware of because apparently you can try overseas but it's up to the discretion of the grumpy, overworked and underpaid embassy staffer who you give the form to. Good luck is all I say... Oh, the other super interesting thing about Russian visas is that there is a sliding scale of cost to get it issued depending on how long a processing time you can allow. Thus for 12 business days processing it's AU$80, for 7 days it's $110, for 5 days it's $140, for 2 days it's $170 and for 1 day it's $200 AND if you want it on the same day it's $400. I was worried about this one as the web site for the Embassy in Australia is a bit vague, but it all came through in the end.
   
9. Finland - At immigration and no cost.
   
10. United Kingdom - This almost rivals the Russian visa in Byzantine complexity and the inexplicable cone of silence, obsfucation, expense and misinformation that sits over anything to do with UK Visas, and as such requires it's own couple of paragraphs.
    

Far out they couldn't make this any harder. For those that are interested, the EEA Family Permit, and probably many other similar visa exempt permits as well, are simply Entry Clearance to the UK. In the last couple of years persons that previously didn't require a specific entry clearance form in their passport (ie with things like work permits) now do require an entry clearance to the UK and this is all the family permit is - something to show the guy at immigration to say you are ok with his government.

We found out about the Family Permit and assumed it would be like a visa. You know, it is in your passport and allows you to come and go as you please. On talking to someone at the UK Embassy (1900 number, $2.75 a minute!) they said it doesn't work like that, it's only valid for 6 months and when you get there you are meant to apply for permanent residency and you need to post off your passport to some bottomless pit for 6 months and in that time you can go to Bath and Liverpool and thats about it.

It actually turns out that once in the UK a family member of a EEA national can go down to Lunar House in person, stand in line and get a Residency Card, free of charge, in one day. It's fairly straightforward and totally legit.

So there's half the battle.

The other half is the application process which is started online (via the UK Visas website) which works ok and then you get booked in for a Biometrics reading. You do that and then print out the form, and post it and every piece of official documentation you've ever received in your whole life to the embassy. Important note - if you have received a fine for any sort of traffic infringement, make sure you put the offense notice in you huge stack of paper work as well, because they will email you and ask for a copy. Why, you ask? Who knows. What possible reason could they need to check your red light camera fine slip? My guess is to make it hard and give themselves a reason to cancel your application.

Anyway once you send it off, don't expect the 15 working days processing period to be how long it takes. Our application (including 2 passports) sat in a pile for about 2 weeks before they started processing it, so when it didn't turn up when expected (ie after the 15 working days plus a couple) and we rang them and they said "oh it won't be ready until at least next week and we can't tell you how long it may take until after that because it sat in a huge pile for a couple of weeks while we were at the fox hunt" or what ever crap excuse they served up.

The clincher for this little process was that it was actually ready before we planned, after adjusting for the new date. We were expecting to have to drive to Canberra and bash down the door to reclaim our passports and leave without the damn permit and the freaking thing turned up in the mail a with more than a week to spare. Why can't they just say this on the phone when you call them (for $2.75 a minute)? Is it that hard?

Anyway we cut it pretty fine (leaving on the 29th May, still haven't got the final passport with the final visa), but it's going to come and hopefully the stress is worth it for the totally super holiday we are about to go on.

Here's a planned route of our trip

It starts....

Michelle and Brock were married at the Albert Park and Port Melbourne Baptist Church on the 12th of January 2008. For their wedding gifts, they setup a Flight Centre Wedding Registry, hoping to fund an extravagant overseas holiday. And largely thanks to the amazing genirosity of their family and friends, they are off to see everything (almost) there is to see in South East and Central Asia.

Starting in Bangkok at the end of May, we are travelling initally to Cambodia, visiting Siam Reap, the beach and Phnomh Penh, then going to Vietnam where we get to see Ho Chi Minh City, Nha Trang, Hue, a couple of other places and then Hanoi. From Hanoi we fly to Vientiane in Laos, travelling north towards Luang Prabang and then into the heart of the dragon, China!

Starting in China in Yunnan province travelling through the tibetan foothills and walking Tiger Leaping Gorge. After spending a week or so in Yunnan, the plan is to train north to Chengdu then join a river cruise down the Yangzi River on a boat shaped like a dragon! From there it is a bit of a clean slate until we join another tour starting in Beijing - The Silk Road!

The Ancient Silk Road has been used by traders from the beginning of civilisation and Shell and Iare going to see it in style, from a train going at about 100 miles an hour! Before the ardours of long train journeys are irreversibly burnt into our collective memories, we will spend time in both Beiing and the ancient capital of Xian. From Xian the trains set out west through the Gobi desert to ancient oases such as Kashgar and another place starting with T or maybe D.

Leaving China just before the start of the olympics we enter the little known and frequently misspelled Kyrgzstan, a mountainous and secluded piece of Asian heaven previously locked up tight by the Soviets. Alpine lakes and mountain tracks will be the order of the day for a while until we arrive in Uzbekistan, the world champion of cotton growing. While we've read the tour notes and looked at the atlas frankly we have no idea of what the central Asian states will be like. Very Interesting and exciting is My bet.

Finally leaving Tashkent, we will fly to Moscow and spend a while between there and St Petersburg. After seeing the sites in the old Russian capitals we escape back to the West via the train to Helsinki. After confirming the rumour that Finnish people are as boring in real life as they seem in Nokia ads, we fly to London to our new home (for a year or so at least).