the very boring process of applying for visas
by someone, who obviously has too much time on her hands if she went to the bother of documenting this yawn-eliciting part of the journey!
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Warning: if you’re short on time, don’t waste it reading this!
Never mind the filling out ten forms each time. It wouldn’t be quite so bad, if that’s all there was to it, but with the Russian visas it’s much more complicated.
You don’t just waltz on up to the open-doored embassy, fill out the forms, come back later, hand over some dollars and find a nice new sticker in your passport. Oh no.
In Phnom Penh, just getting in the embassy is mission! First of all, they only open for three hours at a time, three times a week, so you’ve got to choose your day carefully. Then when you get there you have to be willing to step through a massive heavy metal door in a barbed-wire covered concrete wall and then be locked inside the courtyard before being admitted to the building (more unlocking of door follows and clicking fast behind you). Smile at the security camera as you walk through the metal detector, but make it look like you’re actually smiling at the Russian secretary, who appears to block your way to the front desk. You stop (because she’s not going to let you go any further) and utter your request. Secretary cannot help you, and informs you you’ll need to speak to the Consul, who will not be working until 10am. You are not allowed to take application forms until you have proven you have the right documents, but she kindly gives you a phone number to call after 10 and you realise you are being ushered back out the way you came. Waiting in no man’s land for the door to open, you remember you had one more question, but there is no going back!
The phone rings unansweredly. Eventually, needing to make sure you speak to the Consul TODAY (or have to wait for another three days), you jump in a tuktuk and go back to the embassy. Through both sets of doors, under the metal detector and up to that fast-appearing Secretary, who stops you in your tracks again.
“Oh, Mr Consul is not here today. It is a very busy day. He has very important work.”
Sigh. Why do I feel like I’m the only person to have visited the office all day if it’s so busy? But I don’t say that, I give a long sob story about needing to speak to him today or else we won’t have time left on our Cambodian visas for submitting our Russian applications. She gives us a phone number and tells us to ring after 3pm.
Back at the guesthouse Rob is having none of that. We start ringing immediately. Every couple of minutes. Until he answers. Unfortunately he hangs up not far into the conversation so we resume our ploy to wear him down. And it works! Well before 3pm we have the answers to our questions. On the upside, and going against the recently-passed legislation requiring you to apply for a visa in your own country, this embassy will issue visas to non-Cambodian-residents and it will only take them five days, as opposed to New Zealand’s ten. More difficultly, they require an *original* visa support invitation, an emailed copy will not suffice.
What’s this about an invitation? It’s an official letter from the Minister of the Interior or something like that, that you get for free if you stay at swanky expensive hotels. Not having hundreds of dollars to spend on hotels each night (Moscow is one expensive town, where even the hostels charge at least $50 a person), we’ve hooked up with some couchsurfers who are going to lend us a floor to sleep on, and so we have to buy ourselves an invitation. You can get anything for the right price!
And so we begin the process of getting visa support letters. The company that charges US$70 per person is quickly ruled out. The cheapest three are contacted. And contacted again the next day. And again the next day. Will no-one reply to our emails? Late on Friday night we get a phone number to call. The phones are not manned at weekends and our Cambodian visa is slowly running out. If we don’t hurry up, we’re not going to have time to complete the application here, even if we could find an address to send the originals to – if we could get originals, that is! And NO, the Russian embassy will not accept mail for us – if they get any they promise to shred it immediately!
We do the homework for visa-issuing in Vietnam, our next port of call. Apparently, according to a publication we get hold of, they are reluctant to serve non-residents (fair enough, it’s the rules). But we don’t know for certain – they refuse to answer emails. We map out three different scenarios for a Vietnam itinerary depending on various visa outcome variables. This all takes time and effort. Ditto for China. We decide waiting until Mongolia would be cutting it too fine.
After finally receiving an auto-reply from the visa-support-invitation-office, we try the new email they suggest. We post messages on travel fora trying to find out if anyone has used this company before; we’re not keen on handing over $300 to someone when they cannot even return our mail. The email is spit immediately back to our inbox – no such address exists. A week has gone by. A desperate email to the quality control manager prompts a response. Aha. We have made contact with a Real Live Human, who can help us. But by now it is definitely too late to apply in Cambodia and so we explain we’ll try Hanoi, and if that doesn’t work we’d try Hong Kong, and then China, with sending our passports back to New Zealand as a worst case scenario too difficult to get our heads around. But this complicated scenario is not an option. We have to designate the exact embassy where we will pick up our visas. What’s more, we have to find one that will a) reply to us b) issue to non-residents c) hopefully accept a cheaper-for-us group invitation (although by now we would be happy just to pay for anything!) and d) accept a copy rather than requiring an original, which would have to be couriered at great expense around the world.
Grandpa has decided to join us and we figure it would be good for him to take part in the preparations-saga and so he is charged with contacting the Russian Embassy in New Zealand in an effort to find answers to the above itemised points. His first post-embassy-contact email raises a smile on our faces. He’s got right into the spirit!
Wow! Don’t try and mess with these Russians!
I managed to get to talk to a lady at the Embassy, but she was strictly a do-it-by-the-regulations person. Totally inflexible and not at all patient to listen to our circumstances. I get the impression that they would much rather not have to deal with visitors to Russia! So all in all, very unhelpful for you. Sorry – I tried rephrasing questions and coming at things from different angles, but she was totally unco-operative.
He’s not getting off that lightly though. We suggest he rings Hong Kong directly.
And, blow me down, if they don’t have positive answers to ALL our questions. It seems to good to be true. Why didn’t someone tell us to call them in the first instance?! If you’re planning an extended trip and, like us, you cannot get visas for Russia before you leave home, we’d highly recommend you try to be in Hong Kong when you’re ready for them. Consider yourself told!
So we order the invitations, although even that is not entirely straightforward as our group is too big to fit on the group booking form, requiring Rob to make a couple of phonecalls to Moscow.
Finally it’s done and we heave a sigh of relief.
Until we receive the invitations. There’s a mistake; one name is spelt incorrectly and having seen how pedantic those Russians have been so far, we decide it’s worth having this error rectified. Back downstairs to the internet connection. But someone else is using the computers and so the two minute job stretches to half an hour! I told you it got boring.
You really have to *want* to go to Russia. There was more than once Rob suggested it would be easier and potentially cheaper to just fly across the country! But not half as much fun, and when were we ever put off by difficult….or boring, for that matter?
Tags: money, postcard: Cambodia
rayres
Wow! Who knew you had to go though that to get a VISA…Thanks for the information..
[…] up leaving the building at precisely 12 noon, after a much more more friendly encounter than our Russian experiences in Cambodia. What’s more, they verbally approved our applications on the spot before taking our money. We […]