There is light at the end of this tunnel!

With a little over 2 months until we leave the country, and only about 5 weeks until we have to get the car packed into a container, we're getting to the pointy end of all of this organising.

Today we received our passports back from the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Singapore. What a farcical experience that was. First of all, before I had finished filling out the application forms I had a question regarding border towns into the country because the application form was asking for it. After emailing the embassy and getting a useless response, I was surfing the net trying to get the answer myself and came across a Wikipedia article that had very familiar wording. Yep, the lady at the embassy had literally done a cut and paste from this Wikipedia article, word for word, and passed it off as her "answer" to my question.

Then after sending our passports and applications to them, there was an issue with the payment. In a nutshell, the lady at the embassy had told us an amount that was $15 less than what needed to be paid. So, that meant we had a shortfall on our application fee of $15 and had to pay an additional $45 in bank fees to send this second overseas transaction. OMG. Get it together people.

And then I had a little bit of difficulty trying to organise a courier to pick up from Singapore. They seemed to find it a weird request that I was asking them to collect our documents from a country other than Australia. Ooookaaaayy. Anyway, in the end I used DHL and let me tell you, if you ever need to utilise the services of an international courier, use DHL. They were so efficient to deal with and they delivered our passports a whole day earlier than they said they would.

Another thing, I applied for double entry tourist visas for Kazakhstan because it allows us to have a 60 day period to enter the country. Of course I checked our Kazakhstan visas today with a fine tooth comb and have realised that we've been granted the 60 day period, great, Graeme's visa says valid for 2 entries, great, but......my visa says valid for 1 entry. What the!? Come on! Oh well, I'm seriously peeved on principle because we've paid for the two of us to have double entry visas but at least it was one country that we don't need to have any more than one entry. We had to apply for the double entry visa to get the 60 day entry period instead of 30 day window to enter the country. All's fine, but it's just annoying. Yet another annoying thing to happen with the Kazakhstan visa.

Oh, and a funny line that Graeme accidentally put into an email to the embassy early last week went something like this..."We are very disappointed with how this transaction has gone and this does not bode well for our visit to your country." Haha oops! Thankfully our visas had been processed and stuck into our passports before that little comment slipped through!

Anyway, like I said, we've got our passports back safe and sound now with only one more to apply for...Mongolia. I have to look into it again because the application requirements have slipped my memory due to everything else swimming around in my head. I think we'll have to wait until June to apply for it but thankfully the embassy is here in Canberra. Easy peasy!

Also this week we're getting a quote organised for marine insurance. Another cost to add to the amount associated with shipping. And Graeme is looking into registering the car early. Getting the CTP greenslip early is proving slightly difficult.

AND something exciting, I booked us some accommodation in Vladivostok last week! Woo hoo! We read a blog of some people who actually stayed in this hotel while they were waiting for their 4WDs to be unloaded and customs cleared in Vladivostok from Australia. One of the couples who stayed there didn't have hot running water in their room. But hey, there's free Wi-Fi and that's important considering our main line of communication with the shipping company will be via email. The hotel is also located within walking distance to the shipping company's head office (important) and 10mins walk from the train station. Who needs hot water! Although I am hoping that issue has now been fixed.

We also went to a different travel agency a couple of weeks ago and have a quote for flights. So I suppose we'll lock all that in this week and that's another thing done. Very exciting!

I also found Russian and Mongolian phrase books - so tick that off the list as well! I still need to get us some foreign currency (Russia, Kazakhstan, US). From what we understand, you can't obtain Mongolian currency outside Mongolia, and US dollars are often accepted there. So that should tide us over until we can get to a bank or something in Mongolia to change some money over.

The next couple of months are going to fly by!