The Visa Trifecta

Glad to say that we've completed the Visa Trifecta of Russia, Mongolia and China, picking up our Chinese Visas yesterday.


We posted the Russian and Mongolian visas in - the Russian visa took 9 working days plus 2 days for express postage and the Mongolian visa took 1 working day (!) plus 2 days for express postage.  To get the Chinese visa by post, it was apparently going to take 10 working days (and we only had 10 working days left), so we decided to fill out the forms and book an appointment with their Visa Centre (they've outsourced their visas to a private company), which was quoting 4 working days.  We made an appointment online, rocked up, and were out in 10 minutes - I would highly recommend visiting the Visa Centre if you're in need of a Chinese Visa.  (Pro tip:  Photocopy the photo page of your passport and your Drivers License before you get there, because they need it and the queue for the photocopier is the longest one in the place.)  The best part was seeing that our Australian citizen visas cost half of what it would cost an American citizen to visit - finally, a benefit to being Aussie!

Yesterday was a big day of packing - the second bedroom is empty and clean, the lounge room is mostly empty, the kitchen is half-empty and our bedroom is mostly empty.  We're up to 8 boxes out of the 15 that we were quoted on, and I'm pretty sure we're not going to make 15 - we don't own much stuff now.  On the first day of packing, we filled 5 garbage bag of clothes, 1 garbage bag of shoes and 3 garbage bags of books and gave them to the Smith Family/St Vinnies (Homeless/Disadvantaged collection), so we're definitely living a lot lighter than we were.

Today the plan is to completely finish the packing and get started on the cleaning.  (What a fun way to spend your time off.)