Category Archives: China

One Week Until China. I Hate China.

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Sigh.

I was reading a blog about China.  It had travel tips.  Like bringing plastic bags so you can fill them up with water and use them as a stopper for the drainage hole in the middle of the bathroom floor in your hotel room.  This will stop the smell.  My first reaction was “Oh wow – that is a BRILLIANT idea!” My second reaction was to start laughing hysterical because I am traveling to a place for which I read helpful advice on how to stop your hotel room from smelling like poop.

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Two Weeks Until China!

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GAAAAAAAAH.   I am not ready to go and I no longer want to go.  Do not fear though, I experience this before EVERY trip I take.  I always melt down before I go and wish I had not taken on such a huge project.  Then I get there and I forget I ever felt that way until I go back home and see these weird and foreign whines in my diary.

I could psychoanalyze myself and tell  you why I do this, or you could join me in ignoring me and together, we can move on from this.

I am still not going to post my updated itinerary because OH HEY GUESS WHAT?  Just yesterday I flipped a coin to see about changing it.  The coin said no, but I do not agree with it.  So maybe I will change it again tonight.  Or tomorrow.  Or every day until I leave.

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Travel to China: The One Where I get my China Visa

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Holy Crap how did the time fly by so fast?  I leave in a month?!? I am NOWHERE near ready to go.

On Friday, I went to get my visa.  What fun that was.  Way back when I started planning this trip, I knew nothing about China visas.  Because you know, why would I?  So I decided to ask my friend Google for help.  I dove right in and asked him about applying for a China visa in New York City.  I came across the Yelp page for the China Embassy in Manhattan and I knew I was doomed.  It seems the Manhattan Embassy is well known for being the toughest one to get a visa at.

Allow me to copy and paste:

  • Do not go to China. It’s not worth it. Plan to go to the Consulate at least 5 times. They are rude and are scamming.
  • They make you type your application and will make fun of you if you did not.
  • Power hungry little men.
  • Seriously awful human beings. Security guards harass and condescend you, the people behind the counter are automatons without a shred of human sensibilities or dignity and with all the senseless bureaucracy, it’s woefully inefficient. China is a large and complex country with many merits but this place is a conglomeration of all the bad points concentrated in one building.
  • This place makes me want to drown puppies. The website has an expired form and useless/incorrect instructions, the office doesn’t carry any forms, the hours are inconvenient and the location is terrible.
  • It’s a sad, sad day for US-Chinese relations when grown Chinese men with US passports walk away from the visa application window fist pumping in joy, having had their visa applications accepted.
  • I was there today. I waited in line and watched a clearly frustrated Caucasian man storm away, muttering, “I’ve been here three f*cking times already.

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Three Months Until Asia Extravaganza

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Once upon a time, I started binge buying outdated copies of Lonely Planet for $1 each on eBay, so I could learn more about places and decide where to go.  One of those guide books was for Tibet.

The more I read about Tibet, the more I wanted to go.  But finding out that you cannot travel independently made it seem like a huge production that I did not want to deal with.  So my Lonely Planet Tibet guide book sat untouched for a few years.

Then one day, I came across a blog post by someone who had traveled from Tibet to Nepal with a tour group.   Reading his post made it sound so completely simple and a lot more affordable than I would have guessed it to be.

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