Visa Tales

Apologies to all our fans and ardent readers, all 3 of you, for our 1 week absence. The fact of the matter is that we were busy tanning ourselves, living it up and generally just consuming a lot of crazy shakes.

But the absolute truth is that both Carol and I have been so busy with work that we've not had the time to do much for our upcoming trip. Some interesting things did happen from when we went to get our Chinese visas done last week though:

1. We got them done. 

For Malaysians, it costs RM30 for 30 days, but plus processing and Chinese employee English lessons fund contribution fees, it amounts up to RM58. The application process now requires you to provide proof of your flight in and out of China plus your hotel booking but if you do not have that, you can declare your reasons on a form which was what we did. Fill up forms and make an appointment here. 5 days to process visa, or you can pay more for same day collection (approx RM300) at the consulate (Plaza OSK, Jalan Ampang).

2. Managed to finally get in touch with the Kazakhstan embassy (115, Jalan Ampang Hilir)! It's not too complicated for this, just show up at the embassy during operating hours - 9 - 11am on Monday, Wednesday, Friday - to submit in your application. Process takes 5 working days, proof of travel and hotel also required. Forms available here.

3. Russian visa....haiihhhhhhh....

We've been told that this would be a lengthy process. And we were correctly informed. It wasn't the easiest thing to get info from the consulate in the first place so right after we were done at China, we just hopped on a cab and nipped down to Russia. Got into the consulate office; it's a tiny office almost full of people and one little old Indian lady behind a counter. We got there in time to hear her say "Okay everyone. If you're not flying this or next week, please go home and come back again next week. I won't be processing any more applications today." This, before 11am.

Anyways. We stepped out of the office to discuss our next step of action when a girl standing outside must've overheard us, and asked "Hey, are you guys going to Russia for work or tourism?" From there our conversation led us to find out that she and her boyfriend are doing almost the exact same thing as us! Ivan and Lyvonne are headed back to London to maintain their PR and you can find out more about them and their trip on their (much more colourful and better looking) blog here.

Update: Russian visa for Malaysians costs RM165. You have to be very careful about stating your dates of entry and departure; once approved you're only allowed in within that duration of time. But before all that, you would first need to get a letter of invitation/visa support letter. Now details on this part is a little bit unclear. Some online sites offer you this letter for as low as USD$20 but if you do it with our Malaysian consulate, you can get it done for RM375. This on top of the standard visa fee. Carol enquired with a tour agency and it would set us back RM650+ to have it done with them. Interestingly, at our point of meeting, Ivan and Lyvonne were about to check out an agency down at KL Sentral who claimed they could do the whole thing for RM300++. 

So while Carol is away shooting in Taiwan this week, I will be making my way down to the Kazakhstan embassy to get my visa done first. This week we'll also be deciding how to move forward with our Russian visas. Hopefully our next post will have more fruitful and ball wrenching stories. Till then, here're the pictures we're using for our modeling applications I mean visas.

Tip: Keep in mind that when you go get your visa done, you will have to leave your passport at the consulate/embassy till it's time for collection. So don't plan to get all visas done in one day. Not that we thought we could.