Why is it that ever since I left Egypt it seems like I have been bashing my head against constant barriers in my attempts to get to China. Today I wanted to get my visa sorted, because I was supposed to be in China yesterday, but I found that I was being confronted by obstacle after obstacle.
Obstacle no. 1: I went to the BTS station (the skytrain they have here in Bangkok) to take me to the Chinese embassy, but I couldn't make my way through the hoards of people. Apparently trying to travel anywhere in Bangkok at 8.30am is not the wisest of decisions. So, I went back down to the main road and asked a girl which train would take me to the BTS station I needed. 'I'm sorry, I don't know', she said with an awkward smile. I found a bus stop right in front of me. 'Maybe it's this one', I said to her, and jumped right on. I bet she was saying to herself 'crazy foreigner'.
Then of course I had got onto the wrong bus, so when it turned off the main road I leaped off it as fast as gravity would allow me. Eventually I made it to a different BTS station and arrived at the stop I needed.
Obstacle no. 2 (also known by its official title of, the BLOODY Chinese embassy).
The embassy opened at 9am. I got there at 9.15 am and it was heaving with people. There must have been over 500 in a modestly-sized hall. 'I guess this is what the most populous country in the World is going to be like', I thought to myself. I went to collect my queue number. I was 152 and they were still on 12. Great.
I sat down and stared at the red flashing numbers above the booths. They were going up so slowly. There was a gap between where I was sat and the booths and that gap was filled by people who I assumed had the correct numbers and were waiting in an orderly manner to be seen. Then I started doubting my naivety. What if.... What if.... 'No!' I said to myself. Don't even contemplate it! It can't be! But what if it was? What if... GASP! GULP! What if those people standing in front of me thought themselves superior of the queueing procedure and instead were just lining up behind the booths waiting for the first to become free. I decided to test this hypothesis and watched the crowds in front of me like a hawk. I'm pretty sure I didn't blink for a good 15 minutes and a man in front of me may have seen my straightened back and serious expression and wondered what was going on.
But just staring did not seem entirely sufficient. With that, I took out my stop watch and started timing the time it took for the numbers in the two booths directly in front of me to change to the next number. Yes that's right, pen, paper and stopwatch in hand, and a few more worried glances my way. The English queue etiquette has been pounded into me harder than I had first thought.
After 7 minutes and 36 seconds I noticed something quite alarming. A man, who must have been around 50, was hovering next to booth 1, one of the booths I was closely monitoring. The number 51 hung above the booth and a man, who I guessed to be French, was having his papers checked. When Frenchie left, 50-year old man went straight for the booth. And... the number hadn't changed yet! That could only mean one thing - that man had broken the queue law! If looks could kill, I would have sent that man to an early grave. I was so angry I contemplated running up to him, tapping him on the shoulder then somehow whistling very loudly (I imagined all of this very seriously in my head and just regretted not having a whistle on my person) so that I could get the attention of everyone else in the room and shout, 'This man thinks he's better than all of us! He jumped the queue!' At which point I'd jump on top of him and pummel the crap out of him. You can see I was very upset by all of this. Instead however, I resorted to staring at him. Non stop. Wherever he went, I stared. And stared. and stared. I could have stared at him forever but a voice interrupted my torrent of rage.
'What number do you have?'
'What?' I said quite abruptly - this voice had received a portion of the anger that was coursing through my veins.
It was a man in his forties and he seemed genuinely frightened by me.
'I have number 90 but I need to get some more documents. Do you want to swap numbers?'
After a few seconds I collected myself and fished out my number 152 from my pocket. I handed it to him and thanked him.
Obstacle no.3: I was really hungry.
We got to number 60, so only 30 left until mine, but the problem was I was starving. The first 30 had taken an hour so I reasoned I could walk the 10 minutes it took to get to the Tesco Lotus Centre, grab something rice-related to eat, and be back in time. I walked pretty fast there and back and luckily as I walked through the embassy door I saw my number on the wall. But. A filthy, queue-cheating piece of scum was at my booth. I was very close to tapping him on the shoulder and hissing at him 'Where's your number scum???' but I resisted. [Many of you may not know this, but I actually have quite an anger-issue. I get angry VERY quickly at trivial things but I can usually keep my cool at the bigger things. My sister thinks it's funny, I think it's bad for my health but when I think back to my thought process at the peak of my anger I have to admit, my sister might be right.]
Another man was unfortunate enough to ask me a question when I was mentally trying to stab in front of me. He too got an abrupt reply.
Finally, it was my turn. The girl took the papers but told me I needed to photocopy some other things. It was 10.55am. The application accepting ended at 11.30am. I ran out of the embassy, panting and sweating to find the nearest photocopier. The woman smelled my urgency (or my sweat) and did the job quickly (my smell may have been making her nauseous). 30 baht she said. I only had 1000. Frantically I scraped every last coin I could find out of my wallet and threw them at her ten hurried back to the embassy. The woman gave me a little pink slip and told me to come back at 3pm. 'Finally', I thought, 'I almost have my Chinese visa!'
Obstacle no. 4: 'You have to wait a very long time'.
At 2.45pm precisely I left a cafe near to the embassy and made my way back. In the few hours I'd been waiting, I booked my flight for 2am the next morning. Money had already been spent. I HAD to fly out in the morning, which meant I HAD to have my visa and passport today.
Outside the embassy, a long queue of people had formed. I joined the back. The next 15 minutes were really a repeat of my queue-surveillance activities I had honed in the morning. I saw a group of Thai people cut round from the back and get closer to the front. I stared at them. A foreigner cut the line right in front of me and headed to the front of the queue. 'What cheek!' I thought to myself. But I needn't have worried because the woman in charge of security at the front told him to go back. My gaze returned to the group of Thai people at the front. Should I go up to them? Should I keep my trap shut? Should I calm down, it's not a big deal? But dammnit, it was a big deal! These people were violating the sacred queuing system. With queueing its not about how much money you have, how pretty you are or how high your muscle mass is. No! It's about the age-old first-come-first-served principle. It's about respecting the individual rights of your fellow man, and these people were grossly disrespecting mine.
But I didn't have anything to fear because the kind security lady did not allow them in until the queue that had formed had entered first. 'Excellent' I thought to myself.
On entering the visa collection room we formed another queue.Then some bastards from the back headed straight for the counter! Breathe Amira. Breathe.
In front of me were about 6 foreigners. I heard one foreigner reach the counter then turn round again and say to his wife, in a tome mimicking the embassy employee he had just seen, 'You have to wait. Maybe long time'. This was repeated to everyone else that was in front of me in the queue, so I should have got a hint and sit back down but I wanted to stubbornly hear it for myself.
'You have to wait long time', she shrieked. (It really was a shriek, very high pitched, very sudden, very irritating.) I tried to understand why but she just repeated the same ennerving statement.
I assumed my predatorial seated position, glaring at the booths in front of me, back straight, not moving any part of my body. 5 minutes past. I saw a foreigner walk up to the booth and a few minutes later walked away with his passport. 5 minutes, long time, OK. I stood up and went to the counter.
'Sorry', the same irritating woman put up a CLOSED sign as I tried to poke my head through the small slot at the bottom of the glass divider. I went to the booth next door and the woman removed the closed sign. (Maybe it was just my imagination?) Anyway, long story short (I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, is this girl deluded? She made a 2-sentence story stretch into almost 30 paragraphs when she could have said ' I went to the Chinese embassy to get my visa but I got angry because I saw little respect for the sanctity of the queue'), after a few minutes I FINALLY got my visa! Hurrah! Woop woop!
So, I guess this means next time I'll be writing from China! Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly!
Obstacle no. 1: I went to the BTS station (the skytrain they have here in Bangkok) to take me to the Chinese embassy, but I couldn't make my way through the hoards of people. Apparently trying to travel anywhere in Bangkok at 8.30am is not the wisest of decisions. So, I went back down to the main road and asked a girl which train would take me to the BTS station I needed. 'I'm sorry, I don't know', she said with an awkward smile. I found a bus stop right in front of me. 'Maybe it's this one', I said to her, and jumped right on. I bet she was saying to herself 'crazy foreigner'.
Then of course I had got onto the wrong bus, so when it turned off the main road I leaped off it as fast as gravity would allow me. Eventually I made it to a different BTS station and arrived at the stop I needed.
Obstacle no. 2 (also known by its official title of, the BLOODY Chinese embassy).
The embassy opened at 9am. I got there at 9.15 am and it was heaving with people. There must have been over 500 in a modestly-sized hall. 'I guess this is what the most populous country in the World is going to be like', I thought to myself. I went to collect my queue number. I was 152 and they were still on 12. Great.
I sat down and stared at the red flashing numbers above the booths. They were going up so slowly. There was a gap between where I was sat and the booths and that gap was filled by people who I assumed had the correct numbers and were waiting in an orderly manner to be seen. Then I started doubting my naivety. What if.... What if.... 'No!' I said to myself. Don't even contemplate it! It can't be! But what if it was? What if... GASP! GULP! What if those people standing in front of me thought themselves superior of the queueing procedure and instead were just lining up behind the booths waiting for the first to become free. I decided to test this hypothesis and watched the crowds in front of me like a hawk. I'm pretty sure I didn't blink for a good 15 minutes and a man in front of me may have seen my straightened back and serious expression and wondered what was going on.
But just staring did not seem entirely sufficient. With that, I took out my stop watch and started timing the time it took for the numbers in the two booths directly in front of me to change to the next number. Yes that's right, pen, paper and stopwatch in hand, and a few more worried glances my way. The English queue etiquette has been pounded into me harder than I had first thought.
After 7 minutes and 36 seconds I noticed something quite alarming. A man, who must have been around 50, was hovering next to booth 1, one of the booths I was closely monitoring. The number 51 hung above the booth and a man, who I guessed to be French, was having his papers checked. When Frenchie left, 50-year old man went straight for the booth. And... the number hadn't changed yet! That could only mean one thing - that man had broken the queue law! If looks could kill, I would have sent that man to an early grave. I was so angry I contemplated running up to him, tapping him on the shoulder then somehow whistling very loudly (I imagined all of this very seriously in my head and just regretted not having a whistle on my person) so that I could get the attention of everyone else in the room and shout, 'This man thinks he's better than all of us! He jumped the queue!' At which point I'd jump on top of him and pummel the crap out of him. You can see I was very upset by all of this. Instead however, I resorted to staring at him. Non stop. Wherever he went, I stared. And stared. and stared. I could have stared at him forever but a voice interrupted my torrent of rage.
'What number do you have?'
'What?' I said quite abruptly - this voice had received a portion of the anger that was coursing through my veins.
It was a man in his forties and he seemed genuinely frightened by me.
'I have number 90 but I need to get some more documents. Do you want to swap numbers?'
After a few seconds I collected myself and fished out my number 152 from my pocket. I handed it to him and thanked him.
Obstacle no.3: I was really hungry.
We got to number 60, so only 30 left until mine, but the problem was I was starving. The first 30 had taken an hour so I reasoned I could walk the 10 minutes it took to get to the Tesco Lotus Centre, grab something rice-related to eat, and be back in time. I walked pretty fast there and back and luckily as I walked through the embassy door I saw my number on the wall. But. A filthy, queue-cheating piece of scum was at my booth. I was very close to tapping him on the shoulder and hissing at him 'Where's your number scum???' but I resisted. [Many of you may not know this, but I actually have quite an anger-issue. I get angry VERY quickly at trivial things but I can usually keep my cool at the bigger things. My sister thinks it's funny, I think it's bad for my health but when I think back to my thought process at the peak of my anger I have to admit, my sister might be right.]
Another man was unfortunate enough to ask me a question when I was mentally trying to stab in front of me. He too got an abrupt reply.
Finally, it was my turn. The girl took the papers but told me I needed to photocopy some other things. It was 10.55am. The application accepting ended at 11.30am. I ran out of the embassy, panting and sweating to find the nearest photocopier. The woman smelled my urgency (or my sweat) and did the job quickly (my smell may have been making her nauseous). 30 baht she said. I only had 1000. Frantically I scraped every last coin I could find out of my wallet and threw them at her ten hurried back to the embassy. The woman gave me a little pink slip and told me to come back at 3pm. 'Finally', I thought, 'I almost have my Chinese visa!'
Obstacle no. 4: 'You have to wait a very long time'.
At 2.45pm precisely I left a cafe near to the embassy and made my way back. In the few hours I'd been waiting, I booked my flight for 2am the next morning. Money had already been spent. I HAD to fly out in the morning, which meant I HAD to have my visa and passport today.
Outside the embassy, a long queue of people had formed. I joined the back. The next 15 minutes were really a repeat of my queue-surveillance activities I had honed in the morning. I saw a group of Thai people cut round from the back and get closer to the front. I stared at them. A foreigner cut the line right in front of me and headed to the front of the queue. 'What cheek!' I thought to myself. But I needn't have worried because the woman in charge of security at the front told him to go back. My gaze returned to the group of Thai people at the front. Should I go up to them? Should I keep my trap shut? Should I calm down, it's not a big deal? But dammnit, it was a big deal! These people were violating the sacred queuing system. With queueing its not about how much money you have, how pretty you are or how high your muscle mass is. No! It's about the age-old first-come-first-served principle. It's about respecting the individual rights of your fellow man, and these people were grossly disrespecting mine.
But I didn't have anything to fear because the kind security lady did not allow them in until the queue that had formed had entered first. 'Excellent' I thought to myself.
On entering the visa collection room we formed another queue.Then some bastards from the back headed straight for the counter! Breathe Amira. Breathe.
In front of me were about 6 foreigners. I heard one foreigner reach the counter then turn round again and say to his wife, in a tome mimicking the embassy employee he had just seen, 'You have to wait. Maybe long time'. This was repeated to everyone else that was in front of me in the queue, so I should have got a hint and sit back down but I wanted to stubbornly hear it for myself.
'You have to wait long time', she shrieked. (It really was a shriek, very high pitched, very sudden, very irritating.) I tried to understand why but she just repeated the same ennerving statement.
I assumed my predatorial seated position, glaring at the booths in front of me, back straight, not moving any part of my body. 5 minutes past. I saw a foreigner walk up to the booth and a few minutes later walked away with his passport. 5 minutes, long time, OK. I stood up and went to the counter.
'Sorry', the same irritating woman put up a CLOSED sign as I tried to poke my head through the small slot at the bottom of the glass divider. I went to the booth next door and the woman removed the closed sign. (Maybe it was just my imagination?) Anyway, long story short (I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, is this girl deluded? She made a 2-sentence story stretch into almost 30 paragraphs when she could have said ' I went to the Chinese embassy to get my visa but I got angry because I saw little respect for the sanctity of the queue'), after a few minutes I FINALLY got my visa! Hurrah! Woop woop!
So, I guess this means next time I'll be writing from China! Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly!
Hi Amira, This is Haotian. You are going to have a visit in China?
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