A flavour of the Orient
Rai & Stephie in Asia

We were back in busy Beijing. Our mission was not to re-visit The Forbidden City or Great Wall...nope we were in town for more mundane reasons: to visit the lovely embassies of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Iran, get more visas on the passports and complete the long Stephie-Rai overland trip back to Europe.

Beijing is a big big big congested place so if you like getting visas then staying close to the embassy district of Salitun might make sense. And there are some wonderful nearby dumpling breakfast hangouts to keep you entertained before the early morning queue outside the embassy..and for every successful visa visit you can grab a few drinks in the nearby clubs in the evening...this is one of theee party districts of Beijing. And one trip to each embassy will not be sufficient. We enjoyed all our nine embassy visits!

First stop Uzbekistan. If you are lucky and Spanish you don't need a Letter of Invitation (LOI) but if you are Dutch and naughty like Stephie you do! The LOI you order 2 weeks beforehand so even if you are on holiday mode best to come well prepared.....And don't let those Chinese jump the queue. And don't turn up on Thursday...its closed...and just smile and three days later you will have a visa. One down, two to go.

Second stop Kyrgyzstan located in a big residential maze of identical cement houses - first challenge was to find it......we pleaded for a speedy same day visa, did a lot of smiling but the nice man could only give it to us in three days. Two down, one to go....

And then we had to sort out the Iran visa. Again you wait for pre-approval and once the embassy receives the approval codes you are invited for an appointment. We called, no code received; we called again no code received....So we waited, ate more dumplings, took more photos with our fisheye, practiced our chinese, waited some more and eventually the codes arrived and the very helpful embassy staff managed to give us the visa within 4 days. Thank you!

So two weeks after arriving in Beijing we are ready to hit the road again....first stop fantastic mountain scenery along the mighty Karakoram highway of China and the atmospheric Sunday market of Kashgar.

And our long wait in Beijing has not only been administrative. Just think of the wonderful possibility of being able to enjoy delicious crispy Beijing duck twice a day...we will miss it as we eat mutton kebabs, slurp on russian style soups and yoghurt on the long road across the Stans.

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