The Chinese Visa Saga

Despite numerous phone calls, emails and reassurances to the contrary, it was in the Cambodian capital’s Chinese Embassy that we were finally told that there was no way to secure a visa for longer than 30 days on the road. We’d spent ages getting photocopies, print outs, passport pictures and forms only to be immediately turned away from the counter and we felt both deflated and panicked as we realised the only option was fly back to the UK.

This presented 3 main challenges: 1) timing (when could we reasonably make the trip home? We were going to have to cut out a part of our itinerary and which was really sad after all the planning and preparation we’d done), 2) the cost (the price of return flights half way across the world was eye watering, not to mention all the flights and prepaid accommodation that would be lost), and 3) actually getting a visa (the official way to get a visa from the embassy is through an agency that required appointments which were fully booked up months in advance). There was also an added complication that Joe’s parents had a fully booked holiday for us all through Vietnam in just over a week so we HAD to be in Ho Chi Minh city for the start of that. All this meant we really only had two options: fly home now and miss out the last week of Cambodia or fly after Vietnam and miss out Hong Kong.

Many hours of googling flights, phone calls home to parents and agencies in London (not easy given the time difference!) and lots of considering which bits of the trip we were willing to sacrifice later, we booked absolutely last minute flights home from Phnom Penh via Kuala Lumpur, returning to South East Asia after 8 days but this time to Ho Chi Minh. We found an expensive agency who could get our visas through an express service without an appointment in advance, giving us time to get everything sorted and still be back in SE Asia for the start of the family Vietnam trip. Phew!