Visa fees for Canadians to enter Chile and my new Chinese visa

As you know I want to keep track of a few things about flights, baggage allowance, visa requirements etc and just like the recipes I post for myself I know that this blog is the easiest way for me to file and later find and access this information.

Canadians entering Chile have to pay US$132 and the visa is valid for the life of their passport.

Speaking of which (passport I mean): I have a new passport and my very first visa in it was a one year multi-entry (30 days at a time) Chinese visa...and I am very happy about that!

I followed the advise given to me by the Chinese consulate in Johannesburg while doing my first Chinese visa and applied for my visa while in Canada. And it was so much easier. In fact they were surprised to see that I had obtained a Chinese visa on a Canadian passport while on a tourist visa in South Africa. The guy I talked to actually said that they weren't supposed to give it to me at all. And indeed while I was at the consulate a guy was refused his visa because he was not Canadian and only had a tourist status. Apparently it would have worked if he had had residency or a work permit or something of the sort.

I am very grateful that I did manage to get my first visa.

I have already bought another series of Mandarin language CDs (which I found quite cheap in Canada) to prepare for my next trip. The little bit that I could say and understand made my last trip so much more enjoyable, and Chinese people are so friendly when you just even try to speak the language. I am sure that they understood some of what I said just by shear determination on their part because I am pretty sure that it could not have been easy to make sense of what I was trying to say.
I loved it. I really recommend China as a travel destination!

I just realized..... I forgot to write down ow much I paid for my Chinese visa.
Mostly though I like to record what you need to have when you arrive because the Chilean visa fee is to be paid in US$ at your entrance point into Chile (yes, they take credit cards!). And there is no point trying to show up at a Chinese point of entry without a visa.