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 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....