2015-06 Trip to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - The plane ride

Posted by Da | Friday, July 10, 2015 | 0 comments

After rushing out of Brennan's 5th grade promotion/graduation (read post here), we made it to the airport on time!

It all started when Abbey want to go back to Hong Kong to see her parents. She wanted me to go back with her. We told my parents and they tagged along stating they want to go back to China too since they haven't gone back to their hometown in 18 years. When Cindy's mom heard this, she wanted to go back to see her friends and family too and then her older son that he wanted to join in our trip. So back in January when Abbey was looking at tickets, she found good prices to go back in the summer and purchased it for nine people! Within days when my sister heard we were going back to Hong Kong and China, she wanted in so she asked Abbey to get tickets for her and her two kids too. So now we're traveling with twelve people!

After booking the tickets we realized that many of us needed to get new passports; that was the easy part. Send it in, pay the fee; done. Then the more difficult part was getting the visas for China which someone has to go in person. It would be simple just for my family except that I am doing it for my family, my parents and my sister's family. The other cousins are Green card holders so they don't need visas. So I had to get every single person to fill out the visa application which is seven pages long along with a invitation letter from a relative in China. It took sometime to fill out forms for five people while my sister fill out for my parents and her three while my mom was able to get an invitation letter from her nephew in China. After gather all the paperwork including from my sister, made copies of EVERYTHING listed such as passports and itineraries I went through to make sure that all paperwork look make sure everything is in order before going to the Chinese embassy the next morning. Then I noticed all the paperwork my sister filled out was hand written even tough on the top of the form stating it needs to be typed. So I had to retyped all the forms for all five people and check that all the names, relative names, addresses, birthday, and significant information are correct which took literally until 2am. Then comes the hardest part: I had to get all the signatures the next morning before going to the embassy around 7:30am. It was a working school day which means I have to find a way to tell my sister early in the morning that I need her three signatures and wake up my parents so they can sign it and I won't leave to late to be stuck in traffic going into DC.

I called everyone early in the morning and met my sister at her work and stopped by my parents for signatures. I got to the embassy around 9:30ish and there was already 72 people ahead of me in the queue. I was planning to go back to work around 11, but so much for that. It was a long and nervous wait then my number finally came up and I went up the window to the lady and she saw the big pouch of paperwork with me. I can see her expression changed but I figured I have all the paperwork and I just hand everything to her and pay the fee and go: that was not the case. After looking at just two applications, she said I need photocopies of something for all applicants (don't remember what it was) and I should head upstairs to copy them and come back to her. OK, I didn't think it was that difficult. I went up to make copies and I was shocked to know that each copy was fifty cents! For ten applicants and each having several copies, it was several dollars for a few sheets of paper! Anyways I went back downstairs to give her the copies and she took me without having waiting in the line again to look over all the paperwork. My mom and dad's passport was OK, then she said that because my sister and I are naturalized citizens we need to have our old Chinese passports and we need to have my marriage certificates which I did not have any of those paperwork. I was crushed waiting nearly two hours and running to make copies for her to tell me that.

I went back next week with all the paperwork that was asked and I even went to the embassy early, I was the thirteenth person there lining up outside waiting for the doors to open. I was ready. Lucky me, I had the same lady and she remembered me! She went through all the applications again and was mumbling but finished processing my family's passports. She then ask why my sister didn't come to the embassy to apply for her family because of my sister's name change, they also need a copy of her name change certificate and her husband's passport along with a copy of it too which I didn't have. I was like, 'I am done, I had enough of this.' I left with a satisfaction that I have my parents and my family's visas processed. I called my sister that I went there twice for her and they still need more documents from her, she'll have to go on her own next time to complete her application and whatever forms they need. So she had her husband to go to the embassy to finish her visa application.

After that, everything was in order and we were ready to go!

Then one of the cousins lost his job and he wanted to leave earlier for China. It was in April and Abbey was busy doing taxes for her work so I had to call up the airline to change his itinerary. After working my magic I was able to change his itinerary so he can leave earlier and come back with us on the same time for a penalty of just ten dollars, instead of four hundred dollars. That was done, he was happy.

One note that I should mention is that the week before we were about to depart for our trip, Korea had an outbreak of MERS, which is a very contagious deadly respiratory airborne infection. The entire country of South Korea was on a lock down pretty much. They closed hundreds of schools and quarantined hundreds of people that tested positive for the infection. We panicked since we were taking Korean Airlines and having 16 hour layover there. We planned to leave the airport to go to stay overnight at a and then go to Hong Kong then to China via bus from the HK airport. Well with the whole MERS situation we called the hotel to cancel and changed our flights not to stay in Korea that long. Fortunately these companies understand the severity and urgency so we were able to cancel the hotel and changed our flight to leave Korea early without any problems and no penalties.