Three Months and We're Out

The wait is finally over. The last say has been said. The fat lady has sung and we're not going to be able to stay in China. Earlier this week, my work permit application (needed to work and live in China) was rejected for the second and last time by the Chinese government. Apparently I don't have the post-graduate work experience I need to qualify as a "Foreign Expert" in my field. This means that I can not legally work in the country and all my reasonable hopes for spending a year here just evaporated.

Considering the astronomical efforts we've made over the past 10 months to get here, survive here and thrive here, it's quite a shock to know that everything just came to an abrupt end. But now, instead of taking time to reflect on things, we're forced to get on with our lives as soon as possible. My tourist visa expires in about a week and I need to be out of the country by then. Just imagine you'd struggled, fought and exhausted yourself to achieve a dream only to have it snuffed out by something beyond your control. Then, pack up your life in a week. It's tough. It's just sickening to think of the losses we've suffered since arriving here. We've put so much into this and I can't believe it's all over so soon. Unfortunately, our time for reflection has been cut short by our very pressing need to get on with things.

We've definitely built a life for ourselves here. We've settled into an apartment and the accompanying lease, we've learned our way around, learned how to get what we need, and made friends… All of which we need to cancel, abort, write off or let go in the next week. In order to say goodbye to some of our friends, we're having a bit of a Halloween/take our stuff party. Should be nice to see everyone one last time.

Side note: at 7pm on the 31st, Alexa and I will be on TV here in Shanghai. The local English TV channel did a feature on the day in the life of a friend of ours and he asked us to be in the show. We'll be getting foot massages with him at the end of his day. This ought to be a hit at our party.

That's not to say that there's a part of us that's grateful for this ending. We've been battered and bruised for the past 3 months and we've neared our breaking point on at least 6 occasions (the job loss before we left, the heat/smog, Alexa's terrible job, the flood, the fire, and the lay-off). Being here has taken a lot out of us and we really do need a break.

Though instead of just heading for home, we've decided to go ahead with the original post-china travel plans of Korea, Japan, SE Asia and Australia. While we're in Asia, we might as well be here and see all we can before we go home. Plus, when in our lives will we have the time, freedom and energy to do something like this ever again? Carpe Diem, my friends. We don't want this opportunity to be wasted. The only problem is that this throws an enormous heap of trip planning onto our already overloaded plates. But like my dad always says, you gotta do what you gotta do.

So here's the plan. We say goodbye to Shanghai on the 8th of November and head for Seoul, South Korea. We spend a few days there seeing the sights (possibly including the demilitarized border with North Korea), then head on to Japan for about 3 weeks. We're going to see most of the southern half of the country and do our best not to spend more than the GDP of Myanmar. Japan is brutally expensive, so we're doing as much on the cheap as we can.

From Japan, we head back to Shanghai for a quick overnight to change out our suitcases – trading cold weather clothes for warm ones. The next morning, we leave for Cambodia for a few days to see the temple of Angkor Wat (the overgrown jungle temple complex from the Tomb Raider movie). From there, we go on a surprise trip that I'm planning for Alexa for about a week before arriving in Singapore to board the cruise with Pat, Lisa and Ian. Phew… take a deep breath. The cruise ends in Hong Kong and we'll spend an extra day or two there seeing Macau with Pat. For the last leg, we're headed all the way down to Australia where we'll rent a small RV and hit the road. We're just going to plan as we go, not worrying about schedules or anything. We'll probably drive a loop around half of the continent or so before we turn in the keys and head home. We figure that with the US economy so bad, it's not like we'll be in high demand back home, so there's no use hurrying.

So as they say, when one door closes, another one opens. These just happen to be very different doors.