stuck in Taiwan

Xiamen is really close to both Taiwan and Hong Kong, which makes it a pretty popular place for foreigners to stop when they need A.) to leave the country and get stamped back in because they're here on a tourist visa (Taiwan) or B.) need to get a new visa (Hong Kong).

Xiamen is the bigger island on the left. The bigger one on the right is actually part of Taiwan. It's a 45ish minute ferry ride away, although, for some reason, the ferry leaves from the middle of the west side of Xiamen to get there...

We're a liiiittle farther from the main island (Xiamen is on the left just south of Quanzhou), but still relatively close. It's a six-ish hour ferry, or so I've heard.

Lots of foreigners take the overnight bus to Hong Kong, it takes about eight hours. There's no night return bus, so the bus back takes about 13 hours with daytime traffic.

Tourist visas in China are usually only good for 30 to 60 days per entry, then holders need to leave and get stamped back in. In Xiamen, that means taking a 150 RMB ferry 45 minutes to Jinmen, Taiwan and then basically turning right around and doing the same thing back.

I happen to know some people here that are doing the working-illegally-on-a-tourist-visa thing and were due to leave the country, so we made a run yeatserday. We all had the day off, so we planned to head out early, around 9am, and be in Taiwan by 11am so we could poke around a bit and catch the last ferry back to Xiamen at 5pm.

Xiamen has many ferry terminals, so I asked a friend that had made a visa run to Jinmen before which one we should leave from. We got to the terminal, found the correct ticket window, bought our tickets for 126 RMB apiece and got on the ferry with no problems at all.

The ferry wasn't anything special. The first level, below deck, had benches and tables to sit at. Kind of strange for a ferry, similar to park benches, but hey, it's China. The second level, where we sat, had patio furniture type chairs in the middle and chairs set up around tables around the edges. This level was open air, and you could pay 200 RMB (74 RMB more than the ferry ticket itself!) to sit at the tables and have tea and, theoretically, a better view. The third level we didn't check out because it was really foggy and intermittently raining.

We thought it was pretty funny that they had binoculars available for rent and tons of Chinese were paying for them, even though the visibility was crap. Everyone was taking of pictures of absolutely nothing and we brushed it off as Chinese being Chinese... at first.

After what seemed like it'd probably been about 45 minutes, we came upon an island with some large Chinese writing on the side and a small flag. The boat actually stopped next to it, and it seemed like almost everyone on board came up to take pictures of the island. Then the boat made about a 90 degree turn and kept going. At that point, we weren't quite sure where we were headed.

A long while later, we came upon another island. Since the first one, my friends had been joking saying that that was it, we'd seen Taiwan and we were headed back to Xiamen. We didn't see anything immediately recognizable on the new island, but once we chugged a little further along the coast we saw that they were right, it was definitely Xiamen.

Out 126 RMB and almost two hours for nothing, for a look at Taiwan, I called the friend that had told me which ferry terminal to go to. She put a Chinese teacher from her school on the phone to talk to the ticket agent, and that was when we pieced together something the ticket agent had been trying to tell us initially. We had bought tickets for a sightseeing ferry (which was now obvious and the picture taking made a little more sense), and she was trying to tell us when we bought them that they were round trip (it's common enough for foreigners to need to make the Taiwan run that ticket agents know it).

When making a visa run to Jinmen, you have to buy the return ticket there, you cannot buy round trip. Apparently, the ferry port we were at had discontinued ferry service to Jinmen. The ticket agent wrote out an address for another terminal for us and we tried again.

Taiwan ferry attempt number two was just as easy, and another 160 RMB. We had bought a backpack full of beers to be prepared for that one. We discovered that you can walk through customs with an open beer in your hand on a Tuesday morning and nobody looks at you any funnier than usual (yay China). Ferry number two was a lot nicer, with seats like a coach bus and tvs. And it had good bathrooms (clean and well lit), which is a win for me, as I have the bladder of a four year old.

Reading glasses in four different strengths to help fill out your arrival & departure cards, thanks China!

When we got to Taiwan, we classed things up a bit and didn't take open beers through customs. We did meet a Taiwanese customs official who'd spent a lot of time in Scottsdale, AZ (basically where I lived the five years before coming to China, random coincidence), and was very friendly, but he had the honor of dropping bomb number two on us. When we told him we were in Jinmen just for the day, he informed us that the rest of the ferries that day were cancelled due to the aforementioned fog.

That posed a bit of a problem for us, as none of us had brought much cash and we'd already spent a lot more than expected. Also, we definitely didn't have anything outside of the clothes on our backs and none of our phones worked. We all had the next day off though, luckily.

At that point we were delirious with hunger, as it was 3pm, none of us had eaten more than a banana and yogurt for breakfast and we'd all been drinking beer since about 10:30am. A friend of ours had told us about a great pizza place, so we decided to head there and regroup.

It ended up taking us what seemed like forever to decode his awful directions, but we did discover that they have a temple basically on every corner (his directions said "across from the temple") and the temples are really cool and colorful.

Naturally, once we got there the pizza place didn't take credit cards. They pointed us to an atm at the 7 Eleven down the street and one of my friends set off, while myself and the other waited for the pizza. The atm ended up only taking locals cards, no visa, so he went on a 45 minute wild goose chase to find a bank that was open and took visa. Meanwhile, we got the pizza and it was not nearly as good as all the hype, another letdown. It kind of made us all feel like we were dying after we ate it.

After pizza, we walked down the street and popped into the first hotel we found, were shown a room and checked in. And then we didn't know what to do. We'd been told by a few people there wasn't really anything to do on the island except camp, which was obviously out, so we decided to stop by the one and only bar. Which, sadly, was closed. In the end, we spent the night playing a little poker, drinking some random terrible beverages, going to the worst arcade ever (with only grabby claw games) and then giving up and watching Payback on tv before going to bed. It was terribly boring; the whole day falls into the "fail" column, for sure.

We had to try "The Beer" because, duh, it's THE BEER. Both kinds are crap. Also, I feel like someone should tell Asahi what "Draft Beer" means.

Sparkling Chardonnay is clearly very fancy and tastes like sparkling grape juice, only not as good.

The next day we woke up early, again (8am). It doesn't sound early in the western world, but the earliest I ever work is 10am so the earliest I ever have to get up is maybe 9:15am. We ate a quick breakfast and headed over to the ferry terminal feeling pretty apprehensive, because it was still really foggy.

When we got there, the place was absolutely packed. Hundreds of people had just spent the night, waiting for the next ferry that would be allowed through. Ferry service begins at 8:30am, and the Departures board showed everything up to at least 12:30pm as delayed. We went up to the ticket counter and were given sets of numbers in line for two different destinations, though we weren't quite sure why, but we were numbers 496 through 498 and 502 through 504.

At around 10:30am they finally announced something to the effect that the fog had lifted enough to allow for departures, and they began selling tickets based on everyone's numbers. By the time they got to 500 we figured out why we had two sets of numbers. We wanted tickets on the ferry to Dongdu, Xiamen, where we had left from. Unfortunately, because of the backlog of people, we wouldn't be able to get on that ferry at any point that day. The second set of numbers was for the ferry to Wutong, Xiamen, maybe 45 minutes by public transit from where we live.

After another two hours' wait, another 160 RMB 45 minute ferry, a 15 minute taxi and a 30 minute brt (Bus Rapid Transit) ride, we finally arrived back at home around 4pm, 30 hours into our day trip.

I'd definitely like to go back to Taiwan, the people were much friendlier and spoke a lot more English, which makes everything so much easier, and everything was so shockingly, wonderfully clean compared to China. It'd be nice to be able to actually plan for a trip though, and maybe go somewhere where there are things to do and see!

Club 1801

Being a big city, Xiamen has a decent variety of both bars and clubs (I think of a club as being a place with a dj and, theoretically, dancing and the like). The bars primarily function like western bars, but the clubs are definitely a little different.

Most of them don't have a large dance floor, rather almost all of the space is occupied by tables, both low ones to sit at and tall ones to stand around. The small dance floor they usually have is actually a runway or stage, for they all have some kind of live entertainment that happens at regular intervals every evening. They have fashion shows, singers (western and Chinese) and dancers, and sometimes they have themes.

 
Guests hang out at the tables and play Rock Paper Scissors (yes, seriously) and Chinese dice for drinks, with small breaks for dancing and watching the shows.

Westerners also prove to be a good attraction for the clubs, so they all have some kind of system of giving foreigners free drinks. And this is how I came to work in a Chinese nightclub.

One of the floor shows at my club, a singer and models.

The clubs all have some pretty decent screens to play whatever on all night.

When I first got to Xiamen, I found I had a lot of free time- MUCH more than in Songyuan. I was out at a club one night and the manager of the International Department (aka the people in charge of bringing foreigners in and keeping them happy with free drinks) asked me if I wanted to work for him. I declined for a while- as a general rule I'm not a fan of clubs; I don't like to dance and, as a non-smoker, I don't like cigarette smoke. Eventually I came around though, the pay wasn't great per hour, but it was an additional half month's teaching salary for just hanging out and drinking with people every other night (oh yes, I got to drink).

I worked every other night from 10:30pm to 3:30am and if foreigners came in, if they knew anyone in the International Department, if they were good looking, if they looked like they weren't going to buy their own drinks, my job was to set them up with a table next to the stage, complete with all the free bottles of vodka or whiskey and mixers they could drink. Oh, and there were always snacks too.

If they were lucky, or more likely if they were friends of mine, I could usually pull off getting them free beer or a bottle of champagne (these being my personal preferences for beverages). The club was pretty particular about the drinks we could give away. Outside of bottles of vodka or whiskey, there was usually a limit to how many beers or bottles of champage we could give out in a night, and those were really our only other options for a table.

If lone foreigners came in, we had cards for single free drinks we could give out for them to redeem at the bar. When I first started, the cards were open, any single mixer drink or even a just Coke or something was game to trade for a card. About halfway through my time there, they switched and had three sets of cards made with a specific drink designated on each one, further limiting the options for free drinks.

The International Department consisted of my boss, myself and up to three other International Consultants (awesome job title, right?!). There were always supposed to be two Consultants working, and my boss was usually there. I really needed another consultant to be working, because outside of us, no one at the club spoke English, so I couldn't order drinks, or key them in to the computer myself. I did manage to communicate enough with the front desk hostesses to be able to tell them when I needed to tables and have them kick out the Chinese for me though.

The club routinely removed Chinese from tables to fill them with westerners drinking free drinks, which made me feel pretty bad at first, until I realized that a LOT of people at the club were paid to be there. They were supposed to act like they were having fun. When the small dance floor was empty, a bunch of them would get a text message telling them to go dance and make it look busy, or whatever the club wanted. Some of them were men, most were women. Some were models. Some were hookers of course. Most of them weren't allowed to drink. Eek.

There was one girl in particular that worked every night. She wore the same silver dress every night, wore the same disco ball Mardi Gras mask, stood at the same corner of the bar and had the same bored expression on her face. Every night. She ignored everyone that talked to her and confused the heck out of me.

Before I accepted the job at the club, I told my boss that I was new to Xiamen, didn't know many people and wouldn't be inviting the few I did out every other night like a club promoter. He said that was fine. Naturally, not long into the gig, he was asking me how many people we had coming every night. I'd mostly just make numbers up. If I hadn't seen a club kid in a while I'd text them, and when new foreigners came in, I'd give them my number and tell them they could text me next time so I'd have their table ready, but I'm neither obnoxious nor a salesperson.

The "having the table ready" line was actually kind of funny, because the foreigners' tables are all sort of interchangeable. Because the drinks are all free, a group never really has "possession" of a table to the point that they can tell other foreigners to leave, foreigners kind of just all mingle around all the foreign tables and drink whatever is on any of them. It can be kind of awkward at first, until you figure out what's going on, when a couple strangers walk up to your table, grab your booze and pour themselves a glass (this happened to me the first time I went as a patron).

Working at the club would have been a great job... if I was like 22. I found that most of the same people came in every night, and most of them were nice enough, fun to party with, if a bit young. In this way, going to work was more like going to hang out with my club friends every other night. But on the random nights when no one came in, it was oh so very boring. Add that to the aforementioned reasons for turning the job down initially, and the fact that staying up till 3:30am every other night is pretty challenging, and you have me quitting after a month.

I also had some issues with my coworkers. I've got a pretty strong work ethic (tip of my hat to my Midwestern parents), so I was always at work at 10:30pm on the dot and I stayed at work, in the building, until I was off at 3:30am. It took me a few weeks to figure out, but when my Chinese coworkers (that I relied on to get our guests drinks) were "at work", they'd often put in an appearance and then leave. Even though the bartenders knew me, they still wouldn't help me when the other girls weren't there, because none of the departments really work together or stick their necks out for each other.

And then, even for the initial appearance, the other girls were usually at least 45 minutes late, stranding me with no way to do my job. One in particular was usually hours late, if she showed up at all. We didn't have a time clock or anyone to check in with, so no one knew and it was pretty frustrating. 

A few weeks in they bought a fingerprint time clock. My boss told me it wouldn't matter to me because I was on time, but the other girls would get docked 50RMB every time they were late. Now, a 50RMB deduction for being hours late is nothing really, but it's better than no consequences I suppose.

At first the time clock worried me a bit, because as a foreigner on a work visa with a Foreign Expert Certificate for teaching, the only job I can legally do in China is teach, and only for my school, so any record of me at all at the club was no bueno. I got paid cash under the table, naturally.

I certainly didn't look like I worked there, I just looked like a club kid that knew the system. I could wear whatever I wanted to work, there were patrons that came in more than me and I couldn't talk to anyone else that worked there.

All in all it was a good experience, I made some easy cash and met a couple of people I actually still talk to, but I'm definitely happy to only be going to the club about once a month, instead of every other night!

Xiamen teaching options

My significant other recently moved to China, we planned on it for about six months beforehand. The plan was for him to teach English as well- it's just about the easiest thing for a native speaker to do here right off the bat. I said I'd do all the front work of the job search, scout out the good places to work and just tell him who to reach out to... which proved to be pretty depressing.
Xiamen is a lot bigger than Songyaun, so I figured there would be a lot more decent schools here. Not so much. Almost every English teacher that I know had told me enough horror stories about his or her school that I was basically left with my school, one other private school, private schools I didn't know or public schools to send him to. Everyone was working too many hours, not getting paid their full salaries, not getting paid on time, getting screwed on time off or visas or something else. Having been through that at my last school, I wanted to avoid putting anyone else through that at all costs.

I also wanted to be sure he had a work visa before he got here. More than half of the English teachers in Xiamen are teaching illegally on tourist visas. If you're only teaching private lessons, this is no problem. Even if you're teaching at a school, most of the time, this is no problem. Until it is.

My school, for instance, is right next door to another English school. In July last year, the other school got mad at mine for some reason or other and called the cops. There happened to be two girls substitute teaching classes on tourist visas when the raid went down, not even regularly teaching for the school. Both ended up having to leave the country soon after.

And my school is a good one. My biggest complaint about them is the way they handled my time off with a trip I took back to the States in September/October, and about 75% of that can be chalked up to Chinese culture, not maliciousness on the part of the school.

My school, the one other decent private school and not working at a school, just giving private lessons ended up being his final three choices.

visa lording: yep, there seriously was more

My school in Xiamen began working on my visa paperwork (to the best of my knowledge) in July when I committed to work for them beginning in September. They were asking me for pictures and copies of things, so I was thinking I'd get here and it would be ready. Once you already have a work visa in China, paperwork can just be transferred over, so after the first Hong Kong embassy visit, you never need to go again.

When I got here, the paperwork was all still in the works, but after a few weeks they told me they needed a "recommendation letter" from my old school (it's actually just a standard form they need filled out and stamped). With that, they could transfer my Foreign Expert Certificate and viola, I'm an expert and can get my Residence Permit and be legal again.

When I left Songyuan, and all of SAGE English School's terrible bullshit, with my visa finally in hand, I assumed that their influence on my life was over. I was still careful though; a coworker of mine there was planning on leaving (due to the usual bs with visa/hours/pay/etc.), so I had talked her into moving to Xiamen as well since she was leaving anyways. She made a midnight run and left the school with no word, which didn't help matters. I made sure not to post any pictures of us together on facebook (I'm friends with a few of the Filipino teachers that have been there forever and are friends with the VP), so as far as tangible proof goes, I had done nothing to harm their school and was actually the only person in the past nine months that had successfully completed a teaching contract.

Unfortunately, my new school didn't tell me about the recommendation letter until two days after I felt safe enough to post the first picture. Eek. So I emailed the owner and the VP asking them for the letter and crossed my fingers.

To my surprise and delight they said it was no problem and told me one of the school's errand runner guys would help me out when he got back from holiday. I emailed the guy and cc'd them and sent him messages on QQ as well and then waited. And waited.

I emailed the VP a few times to ask when the guy would be back to help me, she told me to contact him directly and gave me his phone number. I called and texted him and still nothing. Finally, after three weeks of runaround, he messaged me back on QQ saying that he wouldn't help me because I said something bad about the school and everyone knew. When I answered that the school owner had actually told him to help me, I got this email from the school's owner.

What?!? Leaving out the random std and criminal bits (again, what???), SAGE Education Group has quite the negative reputation to begin with without me needing to say anything, both in Songyuan and online. Aaaaand this was the point at which I actually threw up my hands, exaggerated cartoon style, and said screw it.

I told my new school that the old one wasn't going to do the letter. I had told them from the start that I was concerned about the old one saying no, and I kept updating my boss, so she wasn't surprised and had found a way around it by the time I broke the news.

Yay new school, yay being away from crazy town and yay being legal right out of the gate!

the hunt

Cost of living in Xiamen is much higher than either Songyuan or Tianjin, both due to the easy availability of more entertainment options and more western establishments, but also just because of the aforementioned size and economic factors of the city. This made my initial move here a bigger financial burden than expected. If I'd known about all the up front moving costs and been prepared I'd have been fine. I was not, soooo, it was not the most fun thing ever. I definitely had to get an advance on my salary to make it work, which is actually pretty common, but still, not a thing I think any westerner likes the idea of.

My school here didn't give me a fully furnished apartment as part of my contract, which had its pros and cons (and ended up proving to be the biggest struggle, naturally). My salary was theoretically higher to compensate, but now that I know all I know, it's just plain harder to save money here than Songyuan. Salaries are lower relative to cost of living. I'm really happy I got to choose my own apartment though. It has Chinese quirks, but quirks I'm comfortable with. It's a place I'm ok calling home (for a year), and I really like the area I live in. That said, it was definitely challenging to find and settle in to.

When I left Songyuan to travel in August, I was headed to Xiamen at the end with intentions of crashing on a friend's couch here until I found my own place. About a week before I was to arrive, my friend skype'd me to tell me he was moving back to the States and he'd be gone by the time I got here. No bueno. Luckily, his roommates were still fine with me staying on the couch, but of the three people in the apartment, I'd only met two of them before moving in with them, and only met them once at that.

Their apartment was great, and they were really nice people, but there were some obvious drawbacks. It was the hottest month of year and their apartment had ac everywhere EXCEPT in the living room, so sleeping was virtually impossible. They also all kept different schedules from each other and different schedules from me, so people were coming home drunk at 4am and ordering McDonald's delivery while others were getting up at 8am to go to make breakfast and go to work. It was exhausting.

View one direction from one of the balconies of my friends' 30th floor apartment. Not bad, not bad at all.

Finding an apartment on your own here is virtually impossible, not being able to read or speak. Most people have to use a real estate agent to find a place. Agent commission is half of one month's rent. Otherwise, there are a few local websites for English speakers where people post roommate wanted ads, sublets, "will" down apartments when they leave and things of that nature. As part of my contract, my school had to help me find an apartment, but after three weeks of searching and no dice on one that I was comfortable with, I went on a local forum and found a Chinese woman offering her apartment hunting services for less than an agent.

While she was looking, I decided three weeks on my new friends' couch was more than enough; it was time for another temporary move. I moved to an area further away from things (like my school) than I wanted to be (15 minutes commute instead of 5, boo hoo, woe is me), but I had a room with a bed and ac (yay!), and a bathroom and all that. I paid a pretty cheap rate to live there for half a month while I kept looking for my own place. The guys that lived there had actually both come to Xiamen from Songyuan, so we had a lot of friends and experiences in common, which was great.

I shared my room there with a friend from Songyuan that I had talked into moving to Xiamen around the same time I did. My school had been screwing with her visa, her pay, her schedule, etc. and she wasn't happy. We both discovered that moving into apartments in Xiamen was going to be more expensive than we had anticipated, so we decided to split the temporary room costs and share till we found our own apartments.

The woman I found on the forum ended up finding my current apartment after a little less than a week of looking, so we weren't there for very long anyway. She also negotiated the rent down a little bit for me, which was of course awesome.

In China, you pay rent quarterly, so to move in to an apartment you have to pay four months' rent right off the bat (three for the first quarter you live there and then one for the security deposit). On top of that, you probably have to pay your agent fee. You need to pay to change your locks when you move in since so many agents have the keys to one apartment. Then there is something akin to HOA fees that you also pay quarterly. You have to put a deposit on your utilities if you don't pay them directly each month, like me. Then there's internet, you pay for the entire year of service at once, you pay for setup and then if you have to buy wireless router that's an additional cost as well. There's drinking water, to get a water machine with the large jugs you have to pay for a large quantity of jugs up front and then they just deliver them to you as you use them up. And then, even for a furnished apartment, you need to buy normal house-y things, like plates and chopsticks and bedding and towels.

All said and done I paid more than two months' salary to get myself set up in this apartment. Eek.

I ended up in the below one bed, two bath, loft apartment on the eleventh floor of a large building that's also home to a somewhat bizarre variety of businesses. My boyfriend was moving to China to live with me at the end of December, so I got a bigger, more expensive apartment than I would have if I'd planned on being alone. The friend that shared the room with me while we were looking ended up staying with me here too until December so we could split costs and she could save money to tackle getting her own apartment.

I feel the need to stipulate that the below photos are pre me moving in a giving the place a serious deep cleaning.

my lofted bedroom

Yes, that IS a seriously random low bit hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the bedroom that I constantly hit my head on.

living room

This is my master bathroom. "Complete" with three walls, one being frosted glass. I did mentioned apartment quirks, right?

It's hard to tell, but there is something serious missing here... any type of cooking surface under that large hood fan. And the appliance under the counter? It's a dish DRYER not a dish WASHER.

Major quirk #3: the urinal in the downstairs bathroom. And no, I don't use it.

random pix: hk visa trip

This was on my hotel bed... is it necessary to let me know the pillow is clean?!?!

Tallest bar in the world, 118th floor. Your ears pop in the elevator. Twice.

Hong Kong taxi drivers can open and close the back doors from the front seat with a button. Sweet.

World's coolest car park.

From the bus in Shenzhen, 5th icon down... no puking?

visa lording, epilogue

After all the crap I've been through with my visa, I couldn't be done. Of course not. Not until I get away from this wreck of a school. I have tried for the past six months to not be super negative, just objective but honest on here about them, in case anyone from school (staff or students) was reading, but I am absolutely done at this point. DONE.

Where did I leave off this saga? Ah yes, after five months of jerking me around, my school FINALLY got my work visa in early July, making me legal with just one month left on my contract. The school got me a single entry visa, so leaving Hong Kong to come back to work used the entry, but documents you get after your visa essentially act as a new visa.

In order to get the visa in the first place, you must have a Work Permit and an Invitation Letter. After you get the work visa, you have 30 days to get a Foreign Expert Certificate and then a Residence Permit. The Residence Permit is a page in your passport, like a visa, and allows you to travel in and out of the country as you please, like a visa.

As soon as I got back from Hong Kong on July 11th, I was calling, texting, QQ messaging and just generally bothering the guy that handles all that kind of stuff at my school every day to stay on top of my paperwork because I was planning to leave the country August 1st when I finished my contract and I needed to be able to get back in. He kept saying he knew, everything was fine and I would have my paperwork in time.

Then on Thursday of last week, he took me to the police station to have my picture taken for something related to that. The picture was funny, they pulled my hair back, pinned my bangs back, powdered my face with white makeup, covered my clothes with a Chinese scarf and didn't let me smile. After the photo, he grabbed me to leave, but we hadn't been given anything, so I started asking questions. He pretending not to have enough English to answer me (I know he does) and made us go back to school to have a TA translate.

There, he told me that I wouldn't have my Foreign Expert Certificate until this Thursday... after I was already going to be gone. Which would mean no Residence Permit. Which would mean no getting back into China. Which I had a bit of a problem with. My pestering had clearly done nothing, if he'd started the paperwork right away, I'd have had everything no problem.

So, I made a big fuss. I talked to my school VP, the owner, the paper work guy and a bunch of the TAs. They all said they'd see what they could do. And then no one got back to me or gave me any answers or would even talk to me all weekend.

They were essentially screwing me over because I had no leverage any more, being pretty much done teaching. I had had a tourist visa that was valid until February for multiple entries, so I would have been fine, but that was invalidated when I got my work visa. After a bit of freaking out though, I came up with Plan B. In Bangkok, I was going to go to the Chinese Embassy and get a new tourist visa, thereby invalidating the work visa. The tourist visa would then be invalidated in three weeks again when I began at my new school. Convoluted and stupid, but my best option.

Then YESTERDAY (I leave China tomorrow morning mind you), the guy tells me they'll find someone to bribe or whatever and get it done (this is commonplace). He takes me to the police station in the morning for another photo for the Residence Permit. Then in the afternoon, he leaves for Changchun to finish the Foreign Expert Certificate process, which must be done there.

 

This morning, the school calls me and tells me that he needs my original university diploma for this. Pardon me, but shouldn't he have known that prior to leaving? It's not like he's never done this before... I brought it to school and they paid someone to drive it the two hours to him in Changchun. Such a ridiculous waste of money (not that I'm complaining there).

After that, I'm calling every few hours to ask when I'll get my passport, paperwork and diploma back from Changchun. Around 6pm, it turns out my passport has been at the police station here the whole time, but everything has gone through and I have everything I need (yay!). I just need the paperwork guy to return with my original diploma before 3:30am, when we essentially trade places and I leave Songyuan to go to Changchun to catch my flight to Bangkok.

What a cluster. It will literally be within HOURS of leaving the country that I finally have everything I need. So, so happy to be finished with this school.

visa lording, the final chapter

As I've mentioned again and again, my school is shady and unorganized. I had told my VP about my holiday in the beginning of May and sent her the dates mid May, via email. She never got back to me about whether or not she had any problems with them so whatever, I booked my ticket.

Then, the day before I was supposed to leave, she sent me the schedule for the coming week, and I was all over it. I reminded her that I would be gone, and asked her if my school owner wanted me to just go to Hong Kong (to get my visa) from Laos, since they're so close. Otherwise I would be coming back to Changchun just to turn around and fly right back to Hong Kong (he has promised to get my visa by July 10th, right at the end of my holiday). No answer. My plan was to pack up all my stuff and be ready to just go right to Xiamen if he flaked on getting my visa this time.

The first I heard from my school about my holiday, visa or anything was ten minutes before boarding my flight to Siem Reap. My school owner called me and said, "So I hear you're going on holiday..." He asked why he hadn't known, and I reminded him that he had told me to coordinate all holidays through the VP. So he called her and then called me back to say she had no idea that I was going either. Ugh.

Eventually, after much back and forth, I got him to agree to meet me in Hong Kong, so I would go straight from Vientiane, to get my visa.

My delayed flight out of Vientiane really messed up my whole traveling plan there. I was supposed to take a 2pm flight from Vientiane, Laos to Kunming, China and then grab a connection from Kunming to Shenzhen, where I could then just take an hour bus into Hong Kong. Sounds complicated, right?! now add a delay in there...

The delay meant that I missed my connection in Kunming; I arrived there at 3am instead of 5pm and slept in a hotel the airline put me up in for an hour and a half before catching my new flight out that next morning. I finally got into Hong Kong and went straight to the visa office, I arrived around 2pm instead of 10am. I was supposed to fly out of Shenzhen early the next afternoon, but visas take 24 hours to process, so that plan was out the window as well.

I stayed in a hotel in Hong Kong, got my visa the next day, got a bus into Shenzhen and was met by a friend of my school's owner. She was basically my babysitter for the evening in Shenzhen, she took me to dinner and a movie and I stayed in her apartment. She sent me on my way back to Changchun the next morning.

I was really excited to finally be legal until another crappy reality hit me. My contract with my school is over August 4th and I had planned to travel outside of China during the month of August. My new Z visa was valid for a single entry into China, so once I left Hong Kong and came back into China with it, that was it. I was HOPING I would be able to go to the local police station and add entries, but luckily, I have since discovered that another piece of paperwork, my Residence Permit, will allow me back in later. I am so glad that bs is all over, I'm legal, and I never have to go through that big of a hassle for it again!

Siem Reap (days 1-2)

Between taxi rides, flights, layovers and whatnot, it took me about 12 hours to get from Changchun, China to Siem Reap, Cambodia. When I arrived, I got my visa at the airport, it took literally about three minutes. The airport itself was incredibly small and tropical looking and kind of adorable. My hostel picked me up there and we took a 20 to 30 minute tuk tuk ride back so I could drop off my stuff and meet my friend from Songyuan.

This is a tuk tuk (and kind of a nice one).

I was slightly exhausted from all the traveling, so we didn't do too much the first night. We grabbed dinner and a few beers, checked out the night market and that was about it. We wanted to rest up in preparation for a temple filled day the following day!

The next day we hired a tuk tuk for the day for 12 riel and set out to see some temples. My friend had already spent three days at the temples with her boyfriend and his mom but was happy to repeat some of them. She picked the best few and we ended up hitting three of them. To see the temples, you have to purchase a ticket for 20 USD, but it's good all day for all of the temples; for 40 USD you can purchase a three day pass.

I absolutely fell in love with the temples in Cambodia. In China, I kind of feel like if you've seen one temple, you've seen them all. They're really similar. They're all either new or newly restored. Sure they're cool, but they can't even compare as far as I'm concerned. In Cambodia, each seemed to have its own "personality" if you will. Even the ones that were being restored still felt old, like a part of ancient culture. They kind of feel like you're in a movie, like Tomb Raider or Jurassic Park, or a video game. A lot of the pagodas and such are newer, like in China, but still distinctly different. Stay tuned for photographic proof.

First we went to Angkor Wat. Someone had said it was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, which then brought up a big conversation about what they were (apparently it's not so set in stone). Either way, Angor Wat was amazing. It's the most popular temple in Cambodia and the largest Khmer temple in the world.

My friend had been with a tour guide when she had gone the first time, so she had some great history and trivia for me that I had wanted to include here, but that information has long since left my brain. You'll have to be content with pictures.

 

After exploring the inside of Angkor Wat and all of the surrounding buildings (mostly libraries), we saw a little road wandering off to the side. Nobody was going down it, so naturally we decided to explore (plus, as usual, I had to pee, and we hadn't encountered a WC yet).

As we were walking down the road a monk came up behind us. He didn't speak English of course, but he motioned for us to follow him. We didn't know where the road was going anyway, so we did. He ended up taking us to a small, hidden side temple on a lake. There was absolutely nobody there, it was very cool!