Well, what a busy time! So much going on at the moment and over the next few weeks, although that sail day is still 2 months away, it seems as though the pace of life is speeding up, but it won’t be so easy dealing with it. A tendon transfer operation tomorrow means that I’ll only have one working hand instead of one and a half, for the next few weeks. Hopefully, I’ll then regain a little more use of the left hand, though it will never be as good as it was. So, I may have to abandon learning the banjo and refreshing the piano, and have a go at the trombone! One of the few instruments where the left hand doesn’t do much, but given that I am tone deaf and can’t hold a note, maybe it will back to the instrument I first started with at the age of 7. The triangle.
After our successful Kiwi Cruisers meeting mentioned in the previous post, we are now looking forward to a repeat on May 9th. The Cruise Critic Roll Call for this upcoming cruise on the Sun Princess is currently standing at 179 and still rising. Just before that meet, we have a weekend at a little coastal patch of NZ with friends and hopefully, we’ll get up further north to Keri Keri to see the twins before they head down to the south island. With an AGM, an Awards Dinners to organise, a Dance Competition (Paula, not me!) and a few things to tick off our travel list, such as a Chinese Visa, a time to get organised.
US politician in a discussion with her Travel agent.
“You say I need a Visa for China?”
“Yes, everyone does.”
“That’s rubbish, I have been before without a visa.”
“No. It was arranged for you. You had a visa.”
“No I didn’t, I had an American Express…”
There has been a lot of on line discussion regarding a visa for China and a lot of conflicting advice. Last time we did this cruise, we had single entry visas, as we were doing 2 ports without leaving China. However, although the Princess website also says we only need a single entry visa, some cruisers on a recent cruise weren’t allowed off the ship at the second port as they only had a single entry visa.
Different Travel Agents have been giving different advice and a couple of our local Kiwi cruisers asked at the Embassy and were told they needed a double entry visa. So, rather than come unstuck, we’ll be getting a double entry visa. The lack of clarity is bad enough, but we also heard stories of one cruise where they were forced to change the schedule by the authorities and had to do China - Korea – China, which meant they then did need a dual entry visa!
We’ll probably sort it out in the next week or three – and they are only valid for 90 days from the day of issue anyway. Later in the cruise, we’ll be doing the USA and traditionally, the first USA port on the trip means delays, as they try to process 1900 passengers. At least we have our US ESTA approved ($14 for 2 years) and our Australian electronic visas (valid 12 months), but we are now both on the modern chip embedded smart passports, so that will be a new experience. Occasionally, the queue for manual processing at immigration is shorter than the Smart Gate. Such is progress.
I’m not sure that there will be another post until after the brunch meeting, when hopefully, there will be a picture to go with the blurb.
