Guangzhou arrival

Guess what? I am on the go again!  This time I am going to Europe with Patricia.  First stop will be Guangzhou in China, where we will stay one night and go on a day tour.  Then it’s off to Europe for 4 ½ months.  We will be visiting Patricia’s daughter in Sweden, then go to Scotland, Poland, and France. Patricia will be leaving a bit earlier than me and will go back to Sweden until Christmas (when her visa runs out).  I will go on to the Netherlands and will be there for two months, hoping to spend Christmas with my nearest and dearest in the Low Lands.... ;-)  Lucky for me I don’t need a visa, so I can stay for even six months if I wanted to...  Anyway, not this time.  I will be returning at the end of January.

Wednesday September 13, 2017

Well, the trip started early enough.  Kevin came to pick me up at 6am and tried to drop me off in time, but the traffic (peak hour) wasn’t helping much.  However, I was only 20 minutes later at the airport than planned and Patricia, who had to get up at 3am to catch a bus to the airport from her place, was waiting for me.  As I wanted to get through customs and security straightaway, because of our delay, poor Kevin could only drop me off and we could not have breakfast together, or even a cup of coffee, as we usually do.  Just as well, because it took an awful long time to get through.

It started with our check in.  We had already had previous problems with a visa application for China, but were later advised that we could apply for a free 72-hour visa upon arrival in China.  However, upon checking in we were given an application form for a 24-hour visa, which was not long enough. Therefore we were sent to the information desk where we could ask for a new form.  While waiting for a long time, while everyone else was being checked in, we were finally told that the visa had been applied for on our behalf and we would be ready to enter China without any problems.

When we finally got through immigration and security it was close to boarding time.  We just had time for a quick cuppa and off we went.  The start of the day wasn’t all bad however, because we had been given an upgrade to Premium seating, which was nice, because it was a long flight to Guangzhou.

And.... there we were in for a less pleasant surprise.  We were sent back when attempting to get through immigration, because.... we didn’t have a visa!!!  We told them that it had been applied for in Brisbane on our behalf, but that was not good enough.  We were then sent to transfers, who sent us to another person, who sent us to another desk, who sent us.....  To keep a long story short, we were sent to eight (!) different people and obtained the correct form only from a fellow traveller and after filling it out and more endless waiting we finally got through immigration and could find our transport who had been waiting for close to two (!) hours, after we had searched for, and found our luggage at the ‘abandoned luggage’ section.  We arrived at the hotel at 9:30 pm and were happy to crash straightaway.