Around Asia
We’re planning a short trip “Around Asia”, specifically Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam in January 2010. We’ve booked the flights, our visas are being processed (perhaps we should have done that the other way around…) and we’re looking forward to joining our friends in Bangkok en-route to Yangon.
Final Preparation
Location: Sunderland, UK
With great relief, our bags turned up at LHR Terminal 4. We’ve had incredibly bad luck with the baggage handling system at Heathrow – the last big trip we had our bags “delayed” (in the official language, they bags are rarely “missing”) for over 6 weeks. On a 6 week trip… And when you’re traveling overland, carrying clothing for 3 of the 5 Köppen climate groups, photo and video gear, GPS, etc. it’s stressful to be parted from it. So we only checked out luggage through to T4, went landside, picked it up and re-checked it at Terminal 5 for our flight to Newcastle.
While we’re here, we’re having a relaxing time, doing some last minute shopping (we usually travel with some food – we did have almost 4 weeks of fried eggplant for at least 1 meal a day whilst in Sudan), cleaning cameras and double-checking we have everything. It really makes a big difference when you have the extra time to finish the preparation in a leisurely manner. I’m feeling very relaxed – I’m wondering what I’ve forgotten!
No Visa For You!
Damn. Two days to go, and the Iranian Foreign Ministry let us down thanks to a whole set of holidays in March – “Arbain“, “Death of the Prophet”, “Oil Nationalisation Day”, “The Prophets Birthday”, “Noruz” and finally “Republic of Islam Day”.
This means we don’t have our Iranian Visa authorization number, so our visa processing agents (Zierer Visa Service, based in the US and recommended), cannot get the visas from the Iranian Embassy in Washington DC. We could pick them up in Europe, but we’re only planning on a few days at my mums in Sunderland, and the only time we’ll be in London is when we’re at HDeathrow airport.
Well, we have the Azerbaijani visas, so I guess we’ll roll the dice and try to get the visas in Baku…
Getting ready to leave for Azerbaijan & Iran
Location: Denver, CO, USA
We’re leaving later this week to start our trip to Azerbaijan and Iran. The Iranian authorities have not yet issued the authorization number we require to get our visas. We only have a couple of days left to get them, and I’m not feeling comfortable about it. If push comes to shove I’m hoping we can pickup the visas in Baku.
Getting visas is always stressful…
