My original trip, shown here in red, involves a flight into China, catching a train in Beijing to Mongolia, then a lark across Russia in another train. Upon reaching Moscow, I was to disembark, work my way to an international airport and ship myself to Istanbul, Turkey.

After much aggravation dealing with the visa needed to cross through Russia, (see previous post) I decided that it was possibly best to skip Russia and head straight over to Turkey (Blue line indicating intended route bar transfers).

I have been attempting to obtain a Syrian visa since. All other countries currently on my -to visit- list have visas obtainable at some point along the way. But Syria requires an application in my home country. This is a minor difficulty, as I have had problems contacting the Syrian Embassy largely due to scheduling mishaps and an admittedly poor understanding of time zone in the US. I still have one remaining clean page in my passport, my departure date is on the 21nd, and if in some way I can get my passport to the Embassy, then obtain the visa, I have just discovered it will be valid for 15 days, to be used within the next 3 months. That would be August 15th. Which translates to three days before the end of my internship in Taiwan. You can imagine how useful such a visa will be to me at that time.

Phone calls must be made, and made soon.

My passport has a problem. I have apparently visited too many self important countries with visas or stamps that are plopped smack in the center of a perfectly clean page. Or two. Every visa requires a full page, and the page next to it for a spread. Other countries that only need to stamp the page, refuse to stamp on the rest of that blank two page spread because they don’t feel like its important enough. And so use a fresh page, rinse and repeat for countries with visas. Therefore. I have exactly one page left in my passport because those last two? They’re for “amendments and endorsements” this translates to “Sucks to your assmar, mofo!”. Additional pages unless a heapload of money is tossed away, take far too long (I don’t know why it takes so much time to staple extra pages), but CAN be obtained with tears and begging at a US consulate in another country. This was my plan. But then came Russia.

Russian visas can only be obtained in your country of citizenship, and since I am still not sure if I can get my dual citizenship established fast enough to get a passport before I leave Taiwan, it is best to be prepared.

Russia and the US are still wary of each other and so to obtain a Russian visa, I am obliged to obtain a letter of invitation, a cover letter an itinerary, dates and points of arrival and departure, and upon reaching the country, if spend the night in something that isn’t traveling somewhere, I need to have proof, and they must register me with their tourist bureau — this applies to each hotel/hostel in which I stay. This is a hassle, but as with everything, these things can be arranged. And so I attempt to arrange such a thing, and after some very stilted phone calls from the most unhelpful employee of any travel center I have encountered as of yet, I was on my way to receiving my visa. But, oh! Russia wants at least 2 blank pages in my passport, 2 blank pages that I don’t have! Now I need to call again and see if they ALSO can add pages + a visa in the same time frame and must be transfered to their passport department. By the time they finally got around to transferring departments, it was 5pm and so after a long period of ringing, someone lifted the receiver then slapped it back down again. Upon calling again, I was immediately ported to the answering service.

I haven’t even gotten a visa yet, and already I’m irritated with Russia!

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.”

- G. K. Chesterton