Travel Karma

To be honest I don't really believe in Karma but up until now I have been very lucky in all my travels. I have never missed a flight or lost luggage or really had any kind of major problems, and I have done an awful lot of travelling. Unfortunately this time I haven't been so lucky. But after much stress and drama I finally have my trip home all planned.

First of all I still don't have a definate answer about my french working visa. The department of employment rang the HR girl from company a few weeks ago to say that there were no particular problems with my application and that it was progressing (whatever that means) and that they would ring her back in a week with more information but we haven't heard from them since. Apparently after the Department of employment gives my company the premission to hire me, they send my file on to another department who decides if I am a suitable person for france (i think this involves checking if I am a criminal and stuff like that). After that it is sent to the consulate in sydney where I have to apply for the visa. I don't fully understand the procedure nor does the HR person at work and the only information I have been given has been from her, in french, over the phone (as I am a consultant I don't work at the offices of my company). So it is all a bit hazy but it seems, if all goes well, I will have my visa by the end of may. But as I mentioned before I have to actually be in australia during the final stage of processing and as far as I could work out that should begin around may 10, although this is uncertain as the department of employment was supposed to ring us with a date and they refuse to take phone calls about the status of visa applications.

I had been putting off planning the trip back to australia until I had more information about my visa and what dates I was expected to be in sydney but since that didn't happen I decided 2 weeks ago to go ahead and book things anyway using the guestimate of may 10. My work visa finished on May 1 so I decided to stop of in china to visit Sitt (my best friend, who lives in Beijing at the moment). The planning was left a little bit to the last minute as I was waiting to hear about the date for my french visa, but two weeks ago I left my passport at the chinese embassy in Paris to get my visa (this in itself was a bit of a drama as they didnt know if they could process a non eu citizen at the paris consulate but they finally decided it would be ok) and they told me I could pick it up last friday, which was also my last day of work. Friday morning I woke up with food poisoning. I was violently ill all day and since the visa must be collected before midday and by 11am I was still in no state to go to the embassy I decided not to get my passport on friday but to pick it up monday morning. Since I didn't fly out until wednesday afternoon I thought that would be fine. I arrived at the embassy on monday morning to find it locked with a note stuck to the door saying the embassy was closed until thursday due to chinese public holidays.

Since my flight left wednesday afternoon and they had my passport there was nothing I could do but change my flight from Paris to thursday. Luckily there wasn't any particular problem changing the date but unfortunately I had already paid for a non-refundable ticket from hong kong to beijing, so I have lost that money, and to make things worse the flight the next day was booked out. After many phone calls, website checking and sending sitt on a mission to local travel agents I was still unable to book a flight. The cheap airlines won't issue e-tickets and there is not enought time to send the tickets to me, and the only other available tickets are outrageously expensive (several hundred euro each way) and also mean I have to wait 9 hours hong kong airport. So I have decided to fly to hongkong without a onward ticket and try to book one at one of the counters at the airport. It should be OK as there are many airlines and flights but they could be very expensive. My back up plan is to catch a train 2 hours to guangzhou and get a flight from there as they are much cheaper and less likely to be booked out. Since I arrive at 7.30am I have plenty of time to sort something out but it could turn into a bit of an adventure.

So now all that is left is to get up early tomorrow, pick up my passport and go straight to the airport for my 2pm flight. I am praying that all will go well tomorrow and there won't be any problems with my passport or visa. I can't wait to be sitting on that plane! The whole thing has been such a drama.

I am flying from hong kong to sydney on May 10 and heading down to ulladulla for a few days to relax and catch up with my parents. I should be back in sydney on the monday where I will probably spend the next 2-3 weeks doing paper work and catching up with friends, and depending on what is going on with my visa I should be back in france and back to work by June 1st.

So for all of you in sydney I am looking forward to catching up with you all. And everyone keep your fingers crossed that there are no more flight/passport dramas and also that my french working visa comes through.

If there really is such a thing as karma, I think I must be even by now.