Will Send Postcards for Posts

To encourage you readers out there (if you are there), to post more comments on our blog and on our photo galleries we are introducing an incentive program!

Starting today, for every 10 posts you will be sent one postcard (to a maximum of one per country). If you exceed 10 posts during our stay in a country, you will be mailed this limited edition ye-travels postcard, designed by prize winning artist and photographer PAR :


Pour encourager nos lecteurs et lectrices de nous envoyer des commentaires plus souvent, nous introduisons le systeme suivant: pour chaque 10 commentaires que nous recevons vous recevrez une carte postale (un maximum d'une carte par pays). Si vous ecriviez plus que 10 commentaires pendant que nous sommes dans le meme pays, vous recevrez la carte ye-travels ci-haut, une edition speciale cree par artist renomme PAR.

About 10 days before departure.

There is about 10 days before we depart from Toronto to Shanghai!!! We are starting to run around, to finish what is needed to be done before we leave (most clever sentence written today!). We got our travel insurance. Emilie has pretty much completed our possible itinerary in China and drew a beautiful map.
More about our route can here.

Visas in Hand

We picked up the Vietnamese visas last week, and as promised the visa officer had tacked on a fourth month at no extra charge! How generous. We are now pretty much set in terms of visas. We might have applied for a Thai visa, although they are not necessary for tourists staying under 30 days. Of course, the situation may have changed these days...

192$ Visas

We got our Chinese visa yesterday, which we felt was a great deal, 50$ for a 3-month visa. I had read that the 3-month tourist visa wasn't always issued, so we were happy to get it at no extra cost. We then drove over to the Vietnamese embassy, the visa process is a little bit different there. You have to give them the dates you will be in the country, then they issue you a visa for that time period, usually a visa lasting only 1 month. Of course, we have no idea of the exact date we will enter Vietnam, so we applied for a 3-month multiple entry visa. This also allows us to cross the border as many times as we want so that we can visit Laos and Cambodia and then return to Vietnam. We were shocked by the 192$ price tag! After we paid the attendant told us she would throw in an extra month on the visa "just in case" . This leads us to believe that there might be a floating price on this visa. However, we are happy to have it.

Plane Tickets Purchased

We finally took the plunge, we bought the tickets with travelcuts last week. We found a one-way ticket to Shanghai from Toronto for 800$ and we decided it was too good a deal to pass up. Of course, after booking the tickets we started to panic cause the travel agent told us we might have trouble boarding with just a one-way ticket. It sounded ridiculous to us, but I guess it can cause trouble. We checked up message boards all over the place, and I checked the U.S State department website, which gives the entry requirements of every country. China, of course, does not require proof of onward travel, mainly because it requires a visa and charges about 800$ Can. for every day you overstay your visa. I think thats a little bit more insentive to get out of the country than the 400$ extra we would have shelled over for a return flight.
Oh well, we have a few contingency plans in case they hold us up at one of the many airports. We fly Toronto - Chicago, Chicago - Tokyo, Tokyo - Shanghai. Our layover in Chicago is 4 hours and Tokyo is 1 hour. Thats fine with us, since we figure the U.S customs are going to be more of a pain in the arse.
Anyways, we have the tickets and it makes us just that much more ready to get out of here!

First Post!

Tonight Emilie and I are planning the trip, I am working on the website while Emilie is looking at medical information.