Prepping for the Land Down Under..

As part of his job, my younger son Josh has to travel to various hospitals. I had gone with him when he did some work in Sacramento. His next assignment took him much further away. He went to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne Australia earlier this year. He encouraged me to get my passport so I’d be ready to go with him on his next trip. I put it off and put it off but finally decided this spring that I needed to go for it.

I found out from Josh that you actually go to the Post Office to get this done. Not every Post Office does this though. The only one in Paducah that does is the downtown Post Office. You can go to the usps.gov to find this out. It will also tell you if you need an appointment or not. You don’t at Paducah. I went ahead and filled out my paperwork (available online). You can also figure out what the passport will cost. The cost can vary from 110 to 140 based on whether you get just a passport or also get a card you can use to get into Mexico and Canada. I went ahead and applied for the card as well. You then need to make sure you bring proof of your US Citizenship – either a previous passport or your Certified USA Birth Certificate. You also need some sort of Photo ID. You’ll also need a photo for the passport. You’ll need a very specific size and specification for the photo (it’s explained on the website). You can get them taken at CVS or Walgreeens. I opted to get mine done at the Post Office. It would be a few dollars more, but I could do everything done in one place. So, armed with my birth certificate, driver’s license, my filled out application and my checkbook, I headed for the Post Office.

When I got there, there was only one poor lady waiting on customers. There was a good sizde line. When I got to the front, there was a good sized line behind me so I offered to go to back of the line. I did this another time before she finally told me to just stay this time and get it done. She looked over my applications and pronounced it OK. She then took my birth certificate, it turns out it has to be sent with the application. Finally, she took me to the side to get my picture taken. This area looked a lot like what you see to get your driver’s license picture taken at the courthouse. Finally, she took my payment and told me it’d be four to six weeks before I got my passport. Amazingly enough, it showed up within three weeks. My birth certificate came back in a separate envelope.

I also had to buy my airline ticket. Josh’s company had booked him on United which was fortunate for me since the two commuter flights out of our local airport (Barkley Regional) are with United. I priced a few flights and got one almost exactly the same price. We wouldn’t meet up til we got to Los Angeles. We’d be together on the flight to Melbourne from there and together all the way to Chicago on the way back. So, I purchased that one. I had a 5 hour layover at O’Hare and a 6 hour layover at LAX. The flight to Melbourne would be 15.5 hours, I wondered how I’d handle that. The flight back was faster only 13.5 hours with a 5 hour layover at LAX and a 4 hour layover at O’Hare.

I then started to research any specific requirements for going to Australia. I found out that ANYONE entering the country needs a visa even if you are not working while there. You can go to the Australian government web site to apply. Since I was visitor, I could apply online and it would cost me 20.00 Australian (about 16.00 American). This gets you an electronic visa that is linked to your passport. I also read about paperwork needed for entering the country. You have to fill some out on the plane on the way over (I’ll talk about that later). I saw several web sites that recommended a letter from your Doctor explaining why you were taking certain medications. My Doctor (Dr. O’Bryan) very graciously did this for me for free. I also checked my health insurance and found that it didn’t necessarily work in Australia. So I went to Anthem’s Geoblue web site and was able to get a policy to cover me on the trip for about 45.00. So, I finally had (so I hoped) everything I needed.

But, there was one thing more. I have a single credit card strictly for use in renting a car (don’t tell Dave Ramsey). When I checked online, I found that it charged a 3% foreign transaction fee. I had heard from Clark Howard about several no fee cards that had 0% foreign transaction fees from Capital One that gave cash back. So, I applied online and got one.

So with all that, I was ready to go. In my upcoming blog posts, I’ll let you know how each part of the trip went.