You would think it would be easy....

After filling our tummies at Yih and Allen's place, we ventured over to Gu Lang Yu to meet up with friends and help the Mexican and his charming wife look for some small Chinese folding fans.

Next year is Alejandra's 15th birthday, and in Mexico it's a very big deal, something similar to our sweet 16th birthdays, but on a grandeur scale. The fans were to be in a specific colour, and though it sounds easy, since we live in the country where every women and most men have them, finding specific colours wasn't. I tried in Shanghai but no luck. Mark and I went over first and asked some friends but the colours were wrong, so we continued looking until we received a call from another friend to join them for a drink at a new bar. How could we refuse? Besides it was a nice break from the throngs of tourists.

Enroute to Gu Lang Yu

Hats for sale..Mark wanted to buy one

The Mexican met us later for a beer and then we continued looking for the fans. We called it a night as we weren't getting anywhere with finding the fans, because a couple of boys were starting to get hungry. Now the fun begins. Finding a taxi around 6:30pm is as bad as finding one at 4:30 when they change shifts. One very quick thinking Chinese decides he will offer us a ride for only 20 kuai. Yea, bud, don't think so. The guy's worse than the taxis in Guangzhou. We found one quick enough and made it to the Coyote where we met Stalin for dinner.

The Mexican, The Australian, The American, and The Canadian

The hunt for the fans are still on....

Consular Services......

...or lack of them.

When Mark and I first arrived in China, I registered us at the American and Canadian consulates, just for precaution. Your passport fees help to support the consulates and embassies around the world.

Here in lies the difference, Mark receives on many occasions updates and news from the American Consulate. The emails will cover anything from severe weather, to any outbreaks, anything that a traveler/expat may need to know while abroad.

An example of an email he received back in December, advising him that the American Consulate would be coming to Xiamen. The closest consulate is in Guangzhou.

Example below:

U.S. CONSULATE GENERAL

GUANGZHOU

American Citizen Services Outreach

Xiamen – December 18

The Consulate General will offer American Citizen Services at the following locations this Thursday:

The Consulate will provide the following services:

** Additional Passport Pages (See Below for Procedures)

Passport Renewals

Notarial Services

Registration with the U.S. Consulate

and

Information Regarding:

Medical/Legal Services in China

Warden Program

Tax Information

Federal Benefits Information

As for us Canadians, I received one email about voting in our past election. Aside from that, I have yet to receive one email notifying us of anything. When I posed the question to them, their reply was that they simply don't offer those services.

Mmm, makes you wonder where are dollars go..

Guangzhou

We are going to try and lump most of the destinations together to save on time and of course we don't want to bore everyone with each and every day we were away, however, a couple of specific days are worth mentioning and we will give them the special attention they deserve.

Okay, so day 1, we opted to take a late flight to Guangzhou since our flight was first thing the next day and grab a cheap hotel close to the airport.

We arrive and wait in line for a taxi, when a Chinese approaches us and asks if he would like a ride. Mark asks how much, and he quotes a whopping 200 RMB. We looked at him like he was crazy and quickly said no. If I new how to say crazy in Mandarin, I would have used it, but alas my Chinese is still somewhat limited.

Then 3 seconds later, another Chinese asks us the same thing and we get a lesser price of about 175RMB, thinking he was giving us a deal. Mark told him he would pay 30 RMB which was still more than a taxi would have been, but I think Mark wanted to have some fun with him. Clearly he didn't need the money, or perhaps he felt lucky and figured he would find some unsuspecting laowai.

Just to give you some perspective, if we take a taxi in Shanghai, from one airport to the other, which is about an 1 hour drive, give or take, the charge is generally 160 RMB. This hotel in Guangzhou was approx 15 minutes away so that gave us a good indication that there was no way that this was going to be more than 35 RMB. Actually, it should have been about a 7 minute taxi ride, but our taxi got lost so it would have been a wee bit cheaper but we weren't going to argue the point.

The total of our taxi was 21RMB and the next day, the hotel provided us with a free shuttle back to the airport.

Guangzhou Trip

Well, today we are back from a quick, and successful, trip to Guangzhou to pick up a new Canadian passport for Tina. Other than having to wait through a bit of a line to get up to the counter, it was very quick to just have her old passport cancelled and be handed a shiny, new, completely empty passport...

New and old passports, they clipped the corner on half the pages of Tina's old passport. And, after clipping the corner, they stamped cancelled on most all of the pages...

For the time being we will have to carry both of these passports with us whenever we travel, as her old passport is void but still contains her active visa to be in China.

In getting the new passport, Tina and I got to talking about how lucky we have been with all of traveling that we have done in the time that we have know each other. It really is amazing, some of the places that we have been, and some of the great visas and stamps that she managed to collect. As a short manner of bragging, we are showing some of those below:

Visa for Vietnam
Visa for Laos
Visa for the Kingdom of Cambodia
Visa for China, and stamps from Easter Island

We are going to have to work to start filling her new passport up....

Trip to Guangzhou

So, yesterday we needed to take a quick overnight trip down to Guangzhou so that Tina could visit her friends at the Canadian consulate. She is down to only one empty page for entry/exit stamps and her passport expires soon, so off we go with a wad of cash and stacks of paperwork so that we can get a new one without having to fly back home to Canada.

We get into Guangzhou later then we expected last night, I think airline delays are a standard thing, and went straight to bed after a quick dinner. It was nice just to have a silence instead of the constant construction noise we are now used to.

First thing in the morning we are up and at the consulate, things there go smoothly and in 90 minutes we are finished, only having to return in 2-3 weeks to pick up Tina's new passport and have her current one cancelled. From there we are walking back through the hotel when we see two girls in "I Love China" shirts with Chinese flag stickers on their faces, then we notice the people outside lining up on the streets.

Ah, what a coincidence, the Olympic torch is running through Guangzhou at the same time we are here. Great, we have about three hours before we need to leave for the airport. A quick stop at a Starbucks for coffee and we are outside with a good viewpoint on the corner.




All sorts of people waiting and waving flags, a guy next to us told us that the torch was due to come by in an hour. An hour later the crowds we a little deeper and there was some police now stationed at various intervals along the street, but no torch. The one police near us said something to some of the people near us, I thought I understood him to say "10, 20 minutes", Tina thought she understood "After lunch", and the couple next to us gave up their space and walked away....

Huh, well that's OK, we still had an hour before we needed to leave to catch our flight - we can wait. An hour later we left to go to the airport, the crowd was bigger but we still had no idea as to how close the torch was to passing.

We don't know how close or far away the torch was, but we made it to the airport just in time to find out that our flight was two hours delayed...