Post date: 25-Apr-2009 23:12:19
Visa, just the term makes me nervous. (No, I’m not talking about the credit card). I picture strict people in uniform peering through their wicket at me, hovering a stamp over my passport page, eyeing me up and down and deciding whether or not to let a little old Canadian girl into their country or not.
Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating just a bit, but for our 6 month trip around the world we need to get 4 Visas. These aren’t work Visas they are just single entry into the country and in some cases a Visa is even required to pass through a country such as Mongolia (even if we don’t stay in Mongolia). Therefore, we decided that we may as well stay in Mongolia for a little while. We’re booking the 12 day Three Capitols Trans-Mongolian train tour through the AMA http://www.trans-siberian.co.uk/site/C473.html. We’ll spend 3 days in Russia, then 4 days on the train, 2 days in Mongolia, then 3 more days on the train. We’ll be traveling from Moscow to Beijing. It will be the coolest train ride ever.
The easiest Visa that we need to get and the one that we can actually get first is the Mongolian Visa. Our travel agent at the AMA is going to mail our one page Visa application, 2 photos, and our passports to the appropriate Mongolian Visa office. We have to apply for a multiple entry Visa so that it will be good for 180 days from the date of issue. We can do this in mid-May. It takes 18 working days and will cost us each $175.00 Canadian to get our Visas. I am really nervous about mailing our passports. I mean they could get lost or stolen in the mail. However, we can insure the package etc, but we can’t leave for our trip if we don’t have a passport.
The other 3 Visas that we require are for the Philippines, China, and Russia. The only glitch is that these Visas are only good for 90 days from the date of issue. Since our entire trip is 180 days and we’ll be visiting most of these countries during the latter part of our trip, we’ll have to apply for and receive these Visas from consulates in other countries. I was really nervous about this because we’re in most countries for about 2 weeks and that isn’t enough time to mail our passports and receive them back. I feared being stuck in a certain country and missing other parts of our trip or being late for other activities. Our travel agent assured me that the Visa will be processed in person and our passports will not be mailed, but the consulate office may keep our passports for a few working days. Our travel agent is going to find out for us how much it costs to get our Visas in the least amount of working days for these three places. She also warned us that the Russian Visa is the hardest Visa to get and it may take the longest to receive.
While we’re in Japan, we’re going to visit the Philippines Consulate and apply for our Filipino Visa. While we’re in Paris, we’ll apply for our Russian Visa. In Athens, we’ll visit the Chinese Consulate to obtain our Chinese Visa. We need a Filipino Visa because we’re going to be there for longer than 21 days. For Russia and China a Visa is required no matter how long we stay. Wish us luck and I will blog again with details of how long it takes us to get these visas.