Legs and Borders

16th of November 2023; 4:20 pm After half an hour of manoeuvring above this truly monstrous megapolis, I land in Guangzhou in order to catch a connecting flight to Auckland - my final destination. I was unable to get the boarding pass all the way to New Zealand because the layover in China is slightly longer than 24 hours (the beauty of booking the cheapest flight possible through the murky website) and so I will have to obtain it here in China.  Door of the airport shuttle bus open, I go straight to the border control rather than connecting flight lounge like the rest of the flight, after 20 minutes of waiting in line man in the uniform stands up from his chair and informs me that I need to go elsewhere first to get my 24h transit visa. On the way there I pick up "Arrival/Departure Card For Temporary Entry Foreigners" form assuming it will come in handy at the counter, I borrow a pen from the guy in front of me who borrowed it from the guy in front of him, who got their perm...

Today is the day when my passport came back through the post with the american B2 visa stamped and approved to use. It is a crucial part of the plan I made to hike Pacific Crest Trail in May. Here is what happened so far. First part of the plan was to get a PCT permit, which turned out to be organised in a matter of waiting room system on the PCTA website. I had to queue up at certain time with thousands of others, and being assigned random number, wait my turn to be able to register and grab a remaining starting date slot for PCT. Unfortunately I missed the first application date in late October when first 50 applications per day were issued, and applied on 14th of January, when additional 15 slots per day were being issued. I didn't get particularly lucky at rng game and got pretty far away in the queue (number 6783, picture below), after waiting for about an hour I eventually managed to log in and book a date for a mid/late May, all things considered the outcome wasn't ...