I have a mega RTW Start Alliance (*A) ticket, ticketed on Air China Paper. I picked Air China because:

• You must be ticketed with a carrier who flies your first leg – sucks, because UA has cheaper taxes which would have made the ticket about a grand cheaper
• Air China allow free date changes, as does UA (but I couldn’t pick them). Air New Zealand does not – they charge NZ$50. As I have 16 flights, and plan to change 14 of them – I don’t really want to pay $50 a pop.

I was a little worried the ticket change process would be a pain – however it is easy. I just called the Melbourne office (at least I know they can speak English!), and put through the change.  And I picked a more civilized departure time to boot.

So I’m going to max out my visa, and stay in china a massive 1 extra day!  woot.  Still, it was a good dry run of the rebooking system – now I am not worried for the remaining 13 rebookings that I will have to do.

Here is a current (as of now) take on Visa extensions in China (specifically, Shanghai PSD) – what the other websites and the phone help doesn’t tell you (maybe they don’t know)…  This cost me 3 hours of my life to learn so maybe do me a favour and download my iPhone App: GPS Log if you find this useful information ;-)

• I was trying to extend a Tourist ‘L” visa.  These extensions are for 30 days (I think you can get up to 2)
• A visa extension is actually a NEW visa. It replaces your old visa, and you need to fill in a new visa form.  I believe this would be a zero entry visa (i.e. exit only).  I read many websites about extensions – and none mentioned this, I have no idea why.
• So it’s not really an “extension”.  Sucks if you have a good visa (like my Multi-Entry) which you don’t want to lose (bottom line from the PSD man: leave and re-enter the country to refresh).
• You need 2 passport photos, and a copy of your temporary residency registration.  This is the registration form that your hotel filled out when you signed-in, so get a copy.  If they can’t provide one you can register at any police station, and get a copy from them.
• I had to wait over an hour at the PSB – then after waiting for this time with my queue-ticket – all of a sudden everyone rushed and formed lines at the individual counters.  There was no announcement in English.  It seems after a certain time (maybe at the end of the day) this happens – I think it was about 4pm, so if you see everyone get up and run, do the same!  Your queue ticket is worthless at this point, you could have rocked up that minute (if you know when it happens – I would recommend it, hang around the counter and jump the queue!).

To save all this hassle – extensions, re-entry or whatever, I suggest if you apply for a Multi-entry VISA, go for the 90 day limit – I wish I had.  If you’re just getting a single-entry visa this might be harder because of the proof you have to show – but then with a single entry visa you can renew it OK (you just have to waste an afternoon).

I wish I could have read this blog post this morning!  Hopefully I’ve helped someone out.

Announcing GPS Log, a location logging, and tagging tool for the iPhone which lets you record the places you visit, complete with text, photos and tags – then enables you to revisit those locations later through the Maps app, and export all your data for viewing in Google Earth.

Check out all the details and videos at http://GPSLogApp.com

If you are interested, there is a free try-before-you-buy version (linked on that website), so give it a whirl and see if you like it!

If you do use it, please give me your honest feedback directly, or via the forums.

This guy has some useful tips on recharging – he’s right the english menu is not very clear at all.  I have had similar experiances with the kind shop ladies recharging for me – lol, it’s nice to be self sufficient.  Stay tuned for some more China Mobile tips.

1. dial 13800138000
2. 2  [for english]
3. 2 [to recharge]
4. 1# [to recharge current mobile]
5. 1 [to confirm]
6. enter PIN
7. # [to end]
8. All done…

‘Jeff’ has some useful tips (note: these only work if your account actually has credit)

There is a much easier way by utilizing SMS(text message). After obtaining the recharge PIN number, simply send a text message “CZ PIN number” to 10086. If done correctly, you will receive several replies from China mobile in Chinese. CZ is short for “Chu Zhi”, which means “recharge” in Chinese. You can also send “YE” to 10086 to check for your remaining balance. As “Yu Er” is “leftover balance” in Chinese. Hope this helps.

PS.  a travel related post!  and you thought this was an iPhone blog :P

To celebrate the lunching of my ‘roll-your-own’ round-the-world working holiday, I present to you, my highly esteemed reader, a newer, bluer theme for Omega Delta.

The city in the photo is Hong Kong, taken last year just before the Olympics.

So far it has been great. It’s a little hard to concentrate on my paid work with a city and it’s culture to explore – and when I am working, my own projects – but I’m getting there. No choice really if I want to have fun in America.

Vodafone’s global roaming isn’t global… >:(

yep it’s not.

So I was planning to blog about Vodafone and how awesome they are being the only Australian company to offer global roaming with Pre-Paid – alleviating the need to pay $29 a month for a plan when you can’t even use the credit (because it only applies to non-global roaming and you are out of the country).

Instead I am blogging about how crap they are.  Little did I realise – and no information on the website or at the shop led me to believe otherwise that Vodafone’s prepaid Global Roaming isn’t quite Global.  And it’s not like I hid the fact I wanted Global Roaming – I got the guy to set it up when I bought the SIM.

Japan and China are two countries for example that do not work on the pre-paid roaming (note this distinction ‘pre-paid roaming’ – Vodafone do NOT use that distinction anywhere…).  Hey that’s OK – who would want to go to China or Japan anyway…?   :-S

My next step while on the phone to Vodafone was to then find out if I can change my plan to one that offers truly global roaming.  Oh of course you have to go INTO A SHOP.  And it must be an AUSTRALIAN shop.  GEE maybe I DID that last week, trying to get everything set up like the good little traveller I am.

OMFG.  So I asked if I could log a complaint, which I did.  And they lady said they would call me to discuss it.

call me

on my vodafone

which does not work in China

wow

they really are smart

… NO CARRIER

On my recent trip to the US I gathered some data to try and answer the highly contentious topic of which currency conversion is the best value. The following methods of accessing cash in a foreign country are compared: converting cash in Australia, withdrawing from an ATM, and just using the credit card everywhere.

Exchange rates are from the RBA (an Australian source is used to hopefully reduce error in timezones – all receipt dates are from Australian timezones). The percentage fee is calculated based on the difference between the RBA exchange rate, and the one used by the financial institution.

From these calculations, the ATM looks to be the big winner (even with an additional ~AU$2.76 fee for the US). I suspect my method has a very high margin of error due to the fact I am unsure exactly what the official rate was (I’m only guessing based off the date). Perhaps an improved study would execute all three transactions at once – but even then there may be a daily error margin between institutions. But, if these results are correct, then I wasted $18.72 by using the currency converter. If convenience is factored in, the ATM wins again – you can use it anytime overseas (even in Santo), and generally without delay.

Perhaps it’s simply not worth worrying about…

* On the ATM transaction, the ATM itself took 2.50USD of the converted amount. This fee was not included either fee column as it is assumed to be specific to US ATM’s.

** This percentage is very different to the other Credit Card percentage, it is assumed that the bank is passing on some other per-transaction fee which I do not know about. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing.

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