Some countries require you to apply for a visa to enter the country prior to arrival. India and China are two of those countries. Both specifically state that they want you to apply for the visa in your home country, but since that was not going to happen, I decided to give it a shot and apply for both in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
After paying $20 and waiting over 5 days to be told by the Indian Embassy that my visa application was “rejected” I was excited when the Chinese Embassy told me that they “approved” my visa application and I would have my visa in 3 days. The only downside was that the Chinese visa was expensive. Every other nation who wants to visit China pays $40 for a visa but U.S. Citizens have to pay $150!
As I stepped off the plane in China I was in for a big shock… for past 11 months I had been accustomed to warm, sunny days with temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s and here in the Guangxi Province of China I was greeted with chilly and rainy 40 degree weather. Considering that I only had 1 pair of pants and 1 sweatshirt I was in serious trouble.
Arriving to the hostel in the city of Guilin I soon realized that most places do not have heating. Sometimes you will see little clay pots where they burn small pieces of firewood to heat a room and it’s common to see Chinese drinking hot water to keep warm. Luckily the hostels I have stayed at have thick blankets to keep me warm when the night temperatures dip down into the 30’s. And the Israeli boys in my dorm room in Yangshuo have discovered that if you turn the air conditioner as hot as it will go it heats the room to the point of needing to remove your sweatshirt.
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