I was happily getting ready for Australia, but I nearly had to turn around and go straight back to Taiwan before I even set foot there…
I had already arrived in Malaysia and was checking in for my next flight from Malaysia to Melbourne when, of all things, there turned out to be a problem with my visa!
I was happily checking in when the woman at the counter suddenly became very serious and asked me a string of questions in English. (I think this was also my first full conversation entirely in English.)
Check-in agent: “What kind of visa you use?」
Me: “VISA?? Credit Card??” XDD My English was absolutely terrible~ Hahaha. I had no idea what she was asking. When she said “visa,” I actually thought she meant a VISA credit card…
But then the conversation took a serious turn!
Check-in agent: “Sorry~ I can’t find your visa detail…」
What??!! I nearly went into shock right there! I had definitely been granted a working holiday visa! Why couldn’t they find any record of it?! Luckily, I had printed out my electronic visa and kept it with me. But even after I showed it to her and she saw proof that I had been granted a visa, she still couldn’t find my details… So she started asking her colleagues and making phone calls, while all I could do was stand there feeling incredibly nervous. My emotions were all over the place. On one hand, I was thinking, “That’s impossible… I definitely have a visa.” On the other, I wondered, “What if something really did go wrong when I applied?” Then I looked at my travel companions waiting for me and thought, “Am I really going to have to turn around and go straight back to Taiwan?!” I hadn’t even set foot in Australia yet! ><
Finally, after they made a whole round of phone calls to some organisation in Australia, we found out thatit was because my passport had two different English versions of my name: one was the romanisation printed after my Chinese name, and the other was an alternate name in a foreign language on the line below. I personally prefer using the alternate name, so that was also the name I used to book my flight. What I hadn’t expected was that although I entered my alternate name on my visa application, they still used my passport number to pull the first romanised name from my passport. As a result,the name on my plane ticket didn’t match the one on my visa, so they couldn’t find my details. Thankfully, it was only a false alarm. Then, when I arrived at the airport in Australia and went through immigration, I was questioned about it all over again. Both times, the entire conversation was in English, and I was unbelievably nervous. Sigh~ Thanks for welcoming me after all, Australia!! Hahaha XD
[ These two different English spellings of my name nearly kept me out of Australia and sent me straight back to Taiwan ]
