Not always great to be an American. .. preparing for China

Living in Singapore I would say there are three major destinations to visit - let's call them "the big three" - China, Japan and India.  Three beautiful, interesting cultures that are so much closer than they are from home.  We went to Japan last year and not my family and I are finally going to travel to China later this month.  (hopefully India is on the horizon...) We are psyched that we were able to get all 5 tickets on Singapore Air (ooh la la) with no money out of pocket.  Well, that sensation has gone from "yay we got the tickets for free" to "at least we got the tickets for free! "

I will detail the planning stages of the trip, especially for anybody out there who has dual nationality including U.S. and plans on visiting China.  The process to get a visa is simple and straightforward here in Singapore.  You don't even have to go to the embassy. They have a separate visa processing center.  Easy peasy. We made an appointment online and showed up last week only to be told we need the hotel reservation.  Ok-our bad. They assured us the process takes only 4 working days so plenty of time.

So we came back today,  2 weeks before or departure for Beijing. We knew that I, as a U.S. passport holder, had to pay SG $240 for a 10-year multiple entry visa. Thankfully my husband and 3 kids have 2 passports-U.S. and Spain. The visa for Spain is SG $90 (US$72). We wait in line and hand over our documents to the document-checker and. ... she tells us the kids have to get a visa using the U.S. passport since their nationality on the Singapore ID is American. Are you kidding me????? $1000+ in visas for a few days in Beijing? Had we known we probably would have stayed for more days to get the most out of the visa.  I doubt the kids will go back to China in the next 10 years.

Annoyed,  we took a taxi to the government office that issued the ID cards and asked how we would change the nationality.  Not surprisingly it takes a while.  No chance.

So back to the apartment to get the U.S. passports and back to the via processing center where we currently wait to fork over a whole lotta cash to the government of China for the privilege of visiting.

In more positive news we have reserved a cool-looking hotel in the hutong area walkable to some of the sites in Beijing.  Looking forward to seeing the great Wall - we might even take the luge down -  and hopefully doing a bike tour of the city.  That is if we ever get our visas.  They should be ready on Monday.  To be continued.....

waiting for our number to be called... and waiting... and waiting

turns out you can take the pix you need right there for cheaper than other places... and I found out there are APPS where you can take your own passport/visa picture and print it!  If I only knew!!!  We paid $45 for 8 pix of each child.

the application...