Diplomatic Mission

It was a Sunday afternoon and a motley bunch of travellers were meeting outside Dalian railway station. A South African, a Pakistani, one American and one Brit. Together they boarded a sleeper bus bound for Beijing. After a restless and bumpy night in the small bunks, and 13 hours later, they staggered off the bus into the early hours of a Beijing morning. The city was quiet at 5am and the air felt unusually fresh.

Waiting for the subway to open, they went into a McDonald's to eat and freshen up. Some of the McD's customers that morning were a little strange. They stared at the foreigners and made obnoxious remarks in Chinese, not knowing that most of us could understand perfectly. When the remarks turned into insults the foreigners began to reply, utilising a few of the prime Mandarin curses taught in good humour by friends in Dalian. It is said in China that a foreigner can only speak Mandarin when he can be understood in Beijing. I'm proud to say that we've finally achieved that lofty linguistic level. The waitress came to us and explained that these three dressed-up girls were drunk and had 'brain problems' (her exact words...) Soon after this we left the restaurant and headed on our way.

Sanlitun:
This is the bar and embassy area of Beijing and the place to find a LOT of other foreigners. We booked a dorm room at the Sanlitun Youth Hostel, which I'd highly recommend for its prime location, good service and comfort/cleanliness. Great if, like us, you come to Beijing on a mission for visas. The hostel is within easy walking distance of many embassies, though we relied on taxis for convenience sake.
Most of us had our own missions, but the first part of my personal one was to get the Korean work visa. I went to the Korean embassy and although I was missing two important documents, they were happy to accept copies sent by email from Korea. The girl behind the desk was helpful and we spoke in Chinese throughout. I successfully submitted my visa by Monday afternoon and was told it would take four days to process. 'Can it be sent to Dalian by post?' - No. 'Can a friend in Beijing collect it for me?' - No. The only option was to wait in Beijing. Bad news for someone with a full-time job, fortunately not me at the moment.

My friends had varying luck with their missions to the Spanish and Canadian embassies. Getting visas can be an extremely frustrating and uncertain process, even for citizens of the UK and USA. There seem to be no central set of requirements, meaning that different embassies are free to insist on seeing documents that you never knew were needed. It's almost impossible to contact an embassy worker by phone to get advice, they rarely answer emails promptly if at all, and have many rules seemingly designed to irritate and inconvenience honest people who are simply trying to travel. I could talk about embassies for a while, there are so many things about their workings that simply don't make sense to an outsider like me. Suffice to say, by the end of the week some of us had done as much as we could for our applications.

In between all the panicking and rushing around, we managed to relax and eat out at some cool places. We found Pakistani, Mexican and Vietnamese places, making a pleasant change from Dalian's rather limited selection of cuisines. One evening I met a potential classmate from the course at HU Brussels, Eva, and her friend Belinda. They're both Beijingers and were very nice company that evening.

My week had been going smoothly until Thursday when I was due to collect my Korean visa. Actually, the visa was no problem and I picked up my passport on time. After collecting it, I went to buy my ticket for the Trans-Manchurian train to Moscow in August. The ticket cost 4400 RMB, but my overseas bank account stopped after withdrawing 3000 and declined my card. Panic! Luckily my South African friend saved the day by loaning me the rest of the cash, but it was a tight squeeze as I raced to the ticket office and bought the ticket with 15 minutes to spare before closing. We'd already booked a train out of Beijing that night, so missing the ticket office would mean delaying my departure from Beijing or coming back again next week, neither option would be cool.

It was a great relief to have both passport and train ticket in hand, and to know that we were leaving Beijing that night. By this point, my other two friends has returned to Dalian, so the American and Brit were left to manage alone. Which they did very well, settling down to wait for the night train with burritos and margheritas on Sanlitun bar street. A quirky Belgian guy with crazy hair joined our table, seemed quite excited when I told him I was going to Brussels, then gave me his parents' number saying I could live with them. Rather odd guy, but it was nice of him to buy us a mango margherita.

Later we headed back to the hostel one final time, showered (you should try to shower as much as possible before getting on overnight transport in China...) and left for the train station. One comfortable night on the train later, we landed in 'beautiful' Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province and a place I usually get out of asap. I left my friend to continue her embassy mission there and got on a bus to Dalian, where I arrived four hours later feeling relieved to be home.