Visa Or No Visa

A couple of weeks ago there was a big hoo-ha in my office and everyone forgot to work for a while - one of my colleagues was preparing for a business trip to China and she received conflicting advice; someone said, You don't need a visa because your trip is less than fourteen days, another said, The rules have changed, you needed a visa, the travel agent said, Wait, let me check and call you back, the China Embassy website didn't say anything...

She headed home to get her passport, just in case, because the travel agent finally said, Yes, rules had changed but it's only temporary, and offered no other advice. The rest of us were scratching our heads as well. What was going on?
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Travelling to China had become the in-thing lately, whether for business or pleasure. Usually for business. My office definitely won't have me go there for their business any time soon; that's... ahem, for those in the upper ranks of the corporate ladder and I'm somewhere near the bottom. Morever, I think one has to prove that one is fairly literate in the language and er... I don't think they'll have any use for anyone with grade one or kindergarten Mandarin - able to read characters four strokes or less.

Anyway, we soon sorted out the matter in my office - it turned out that Singaporeans would need a visa to travel to China even for short, less-than-14-day trips, effective 1st July 2008. And it would only be a temporary matter due to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In all my travels, whether to China, Philippines, Cambodia or elsewhere, I've had my fair share of air ticket problems, luggage problems, flight delay problems, even minor custom problems, but not visa problems, thank God.

Somebody we know went to China last year with two visas in his passport. For the same trip. (By the way, I'm not talking about my office any more.) His trip was booked and visa arranged a couple of months earlier, but a few days before the trip, some kaypoh kindly reminded him to ensure that he had a valid visa. Instead of checking his passport, he headed for the embassy quickly to get it. And so he ended up with two.

Somebody else we know had lived in Singapore for so many years that she must have thought she was one, because she went to the airport to check in for a flight to China without a visa last year. It was there that she received a rather rude wake-up call. Ahhh yes, lesson learnt, it's better to have two visas than none, so don't laugh at Pastor Paul. Oops.

Well, I am thankful I can go to several countries visa-free; Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, at least for the first 21 or 30 or 60 days. I won't be heading up north any time soon, and definitely not during the Olympic season. I am instead casting my eye, and prayer, elsewhere; somewhere new, and that would be the island of Borneo. Not the whole island, just a tiny bit of it. The work there is so new but it's already facing *opposition*, so I can't say exactly where or why or when, but if you're part of the family, pray with us. If I do go, perhaps late July or August, I'll have new stories to tell.