In Manhattan wondering if I have unusually high standards

I've almost finished the paperwork for my Chinese visa, and now I'm booking hostels. Officially the embassy wants to see booked accommodation for every night you're spending in China. In practice they mostly don't care about this, but I'm on a tight schedule and I'd like to remove any reason an official having a bad day might delay the application. The rush is partially because I have a few more visas to apply for before September, but mostly because I'm expecting my green card interview to come through any minute now (arg!), and I don't want my passport out of my reach for too long.

My old friend hostelworld.com has a one day cancellation policy, which means that it's easy to change plans at short notice. Even still, for no good reason, I'm being picky about the hostel that official-me is staying at. What if she doesn't like the neighbourhood? I got sucked into reading reviews and wondering about the people who write them. An example:

I enjoyed my stay at 365 Inn. The only complaints that I have are

1) the bunk beds-- wooden planks are not beds and 2) while the

shower and bathroom were kept clean, it smelled a lot from the sewage.

96%

96%! How bad do you think the hostel would need to be to score 90% from this person?

In Manhattan getting jabbed with needles

Typhoid and polio in my left deltoid, hepatitis A and B in my right. Two neat bandaids on each shoulder.

That's all the vaccinations I'll need unless I plan to seek out rabies (by playing with stray dogs) or fecal matter (by eating street food... delightful!). I promised the doctor that I'd avoid the first and be cautious of the second, and she declared me fully vaccinated.

Other health precautions I'm taking are a steripen to kill giardia in the water, hand sanitiser to kill the common cold in the subway and a lot of insect repellent to, I hope, kill everything else everywhere else. I'll probably take a mosquito net for the sake of more pleasant sleep, but I'm not going anywhere with malaria.

47 days. Visa applications this weekend.

Back in the office in Manhattan under a pile of paperwork

Today I applied for a letter of Business Russian Visa Support, which seems to be the least painful way to stay in Russia for more than 30 days. It doesn't mean that you need to do business, the site insists; "business" and "long term" are interchangeable terms, and at no point will I be expected to do any business. Later it reminds me that I'll need a letter from my business. What? It's all very non-deterministic and I feel a bit anxious when I think too hard about it. I'm dealing with this by not thinking too hard about it.

The letter of invitation should take 14 days to arrive, after which I can apply for the actual visa. In the meantime, I'm waiting for confirmation of my ferry journey into China (Osaka to Shanghai) and my train tickets out again (Beijing to Ulan Bator) so that I have any chance of convincing the Chinese to give me a visa. In both cases, the actual tickets can't be sent out until closer to the time, so I'm hoping a convincing email receipt will be enough.

Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine, and if it's not, I'll have a lovely trip around the US and Europe :-)

51 days.

At home in Brooklyn waiting for more information

Today I tried to book a train ticket from Beijing to Ulan Bator. It's not possible to officially book the ticket more than 45 days in advance, but some sites, like russiantrains.com, will take your money and guarantee you a seat once it's available. In this case, 'seat', means 'bed'. It's a 29 hour journey, and in all classes you get a bunk to sleep in.

There's only a couple of trains a week between Beijing and Ulan Bator, so it's one of a few tickets I'm booking in advance. The Chinese government also likes to have some proof that you're not planning to sneakily stay in their country, so having an obvious exit ticket will help with getting a Chinese visa. So all my plans right now depend on the Beijing->UB ticket, and that's blocked on a bug in the russiantrains site that converts all addresses to replace the city and country with "Beijing, China". Rather than have my tickets sent out to Beijing, NY 11231, China, I've mailed the company to ask whether they might be doing it wrong.

I'm looking for a second bit of information too, which is whether it's possible to extend a Russian visa. I'd like to spend a couple of weeks in Russia, then travel around Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan a bit before taking the train back to Europe and deciding what to do next. Even a double entry Russian visa wants you out of the country by 30 days after you first entered though, and that's not enough time to get to Almaty (three days on the train!), give any sort of fair time to Samarkand, Bokhara and/or Khiva, then get the train back from Tashkent (another three days!). If the visa stuff isn't doable, I guess I'll go look at Belarus and Ukraine instead, but I've gotten pretty excited about reading about Uzbekistan and the Silk Road, so it'll be a bit disappointing. I've asked the good folks at the lonely planet forums what they reckon I should do.

So, waiting, waiting. Once I know a bit more, I'll book the start of the Trans Mongolian train, and I'll apply for a Russian visa. 52 days to go.