Many countries require a visa to enter and some people think its hard to get a visa. Many people didn't get approval for their visa and some other just don't know how to apply for it.
So in this Special Tips post, I will tell you some tips for applying a visa and get the approval. Do note that I will tell you how to acquire a visa for a holiday trip, because in some cases, its different to acquire a visa for a holiday and other purpose like a business trip or a student visa.
You should know if the country you are visiting require a visa. Since I live in Indonesia, there are many countries that requires it. Like United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Europe. But there are some countries that don't require a visa or visa-free, like Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. You can visit here for more details which country that requires visa, or you can apply visa on arrival (VOA) and visa-free countries --> List of Countries for Visa
There are some countries that took longer to acquire a visa, and sometimes you have to go through an interview. Usually, Asian countries don't take that long to acquire a visa. The fastest would be two weeks for an approval. But countries in United States, Europe, Australia, and Africa, it will took longer and sometimes there is an interview. From my experience, when my family was applying a visa to America, it took a month or so for finally get the approval. But my last visit to South Korea, it only took me three weeks. So before you plan to visit the country you need to plan when to apply the visa because it may took longer than you expected.
Prepare all the itinerary that needed for the visa requirement. Usually applying for a visa require a photo, a form of your bio that usually you can download from their country official website, booking itinerary like plane tickets and hotel, and for students or workers they usually need a letter that shows you are a student or a worker from your school or company. Also, you will need to pay some amount of money for a visa. From my experience, when I apply a visa for South Korea and Japan, I will book the hotel and plane ticket first so when I apply for a visa, they will believe you are coming there for a holiday trip and you will not have other purpose for visiting the country. So please visit the country official website (You can search in Google) for the requirements before submitting for a visa.
an example of a visa application form for Japan.
There are some cases that you need to get a visa fast. There are traveling agents that can help you get the visa faster. It will cost you extra money for the service and you also have to pay for applying the visa, but it can guarantee you will get the approval. When you look for a traveling agents for help, you need to find a traveling agents that have good track records, because a lot of cases of fraud. So you better be careful when choosing a traveling agents.
Thats all the Special Tips i can give you! I hope it will be useful for your trip and if there are any question you would like to ask, just write on the comment section below.
On my last post, I wrote about my story getting to Fuji-Q Highland, and a review of a Guinness world record roller coaster, Eejanaika.
Now I will review and finish my story during my visit to Fuji-Q Highland!
Fujiyama Roller Coaster.
Fuji-Q Highland is famous for its world record roller coaster. It fits perfectly for adrenaline junkies that seeks for the best roller coaster in the world. Me and my brother LOVE extreme roller coaster so much, and every time we visit a country, we try to find the best roller coaster there. As I told you before on my last post, my family weren't planning to visit Fuji-Q Highland until my brother suggested it. We had so many hardships just to get to Fuji-Q Highland, but when I finally ride the roller coaster,it was definitely worth all my time coming
there.
Eejanaika was the first roller coaster we tried. It was
unforgettable. But the problem was the queue for the roller coaster. It was too
long and well, it was pretty much boring. My brother and me didn’t have much
thing to talk about for three hours, but if you were coming with your friend
maybe the queue wouldn’t feel that long.
The queuing time for almost all the roller coasters were
pretty much the same. It usually takes
2-3 hours for a ride, but for the ride itself, it usually takes 4 to 7 minutes.
So almost all my time in Fuji-Q was for queuing. It was worth it when you
finally ride the roller coaster but you need to prepare yourself to queue that
long.
So for our 2nd ride in Fuji-Q Highland was Takabisha. Its another Guinness world record roller coaster for the steepest drop in the world at 121°. When I first saw it, I was terrified. The drop was really steep and the roller coaster was very fast. The track itself was long and had so many turns. Even though it was terrifying, I just can not wait to try it! As you can expect, the queue for this ride was also long. It takes 2.5 hours to queue for the ride. My brother and me wanted to give up so badly, but there is a small TV in every corner of the queue and it shows the roller coaster, so when we think we want to get out of the queue, we just take a look at the TV and watch the video of the roller coaster. It makes wanted to go to ride the roller coaster even more.
Certificate from Guinness World Record
for the steepest roller coaster in the world, Takabisha.
After a very long wait, we finally can ride it. Luckily we sat in the front seat. So the ride started really slow and we got into a very dark hall, but few seconds later, the ride went so fast! and then we got out from the hall we can very clearly of the track with so many turns. Then the best part, we got to the steep track and when it was going up, you are really looking up to the sky. When it got to the top, it just drop you 121°. It was an amazing and thrilling ride!! and if you want to get a better imagination of how the Takabisharoller coaster looks like, here is a review video from Theme Park Review.
Sadly, we couldn't ride any other roller coaster in Fuji-Q Highland, because by the time we finished riding Takabisha, it was already 4.30PM and we knew that we need to get home early because it took us 3 hours to get back to Tokyo using a JR train. But we did manage to take one more last ride and it was the Tondemina, it looks like a giant frisbee that went from left to right. The round seating also spin so at one time you would looking down, and the other time you would looking up to the sky.
Tondemina.
There are still a lot of great roller coaster you can try in Fuji-Q, like Fujiyama, was once a Guinness world record roller coaster for the tallest roller coaster in the world. But as of now, its the 8th tallest roller coaster and 5th longest roller coaster in the world.
Mom posing right in front of the Fujiyama, King of coasters.
also you can see the long line at the back.
There is also Dodonpa, used to be the fastest roller coaster in the world, but now its the 4th fastest roller coaster. This ride also have a very long line, so when we try to decide which one to take, we choose Takabisha instead. Sadly, I didn't take any picture of the roller coaster, but here is the review video of Dodonpa from Theme Park Review.
Fuji-Q Highland also have great attraction like Ultimate Fort, a very hard labyrinth that could take you 20 minutes or more to get out, scary haunted houses like Mizuki Shigeru's Ge-Ge-Ge Haunted Mansion and Super Scary Labyrinth of Fear. There is also attraction for kids Thomas Land. So Fuji-Q Highland is a great place for families and friends. When you are visiting Tokyo, you have to come here and try the attraction there. Its definitely worth all your time!!
As a bonus, you can see Mount Fuji right from Fuji-Q Highland.
My tips for you:
Before coming to Fuji-Q Highland, I suggest you plan it first. From my experience, its really hard if you suddenly want to come there and not knowing how to get there. I stayed in Tokyo and from Tokyo to Fuji-Q Highland is pretty far. Plan the trip so you can decide the transportation to get there, it can be trains, bus or even car. If you want to use a train, it usually takes and hour or so, and it usually costs ¥1280 or more, depending where are you taking it. For bus, it usually takes approximately 100 minutes. I suggest you book you transportation to Fuji-Q Highlandso it will be easier, and you can ask your receptionist for more information because traveling in Japan with a limited knowledge of Japanese, its pretty much hard especially if your destination is very far away.
There is two types of tickets in Fuji-Q Highland. The first one is a One day free pass ticket and Entrance ticket. The difference is, in Fuji-Q Highland, you need to pay for the attraction. If you only but the entrance ticket you need to pay for every attraction you are going to take. But for one day free pass ticket, it already includes the entrance ticket and you can take any attraction. I suggest if you are planning to spend the whole day there, it will be better to choose one day free passbut if you don't and you aren't planning to take the roller coaster ride or other scary and thrilling attraction, its better to choose the entrance ticket and buy the ticket to any ride you want to take.
Queue in Fuji-Q Highland are pretty long especially the roller coaster or other thrilling attraction. So prepare yourself for a very long queue and its better to take someone with you rather than queuing alone
For further information about Fuji-Q Highland, please visit its official website right here ----> Fuji-Q Highland Website
After few weeks, I finally can post my new story on this blog. Its because last week was my mid-term exam week, so I just don't have the time to post any new story.
Now since my exam week is finished, I'm gonna tell you about my story in Japan.
In 2012, I went to Japan with my family. We went there for a week and one day, my brother suggest that we go to an amusement park called Fujikyu Highland.
Fujikyu Highland
The story begins when my brother first suggest that we need to go to an amusement park called Fujikyu Highland. He know Fujikyu Highland from searching the internet about amusement park in Japan and watched a show about the best thrilling roller coaster in the world. So when we went to Japan, he keeps telling us to go there because there is one amazing roller coaster that we just have to try.
That morning, we went out the hotel at 8AM after having breakfast. We stayed at Prince Hotel in Shinagawa, and our hotel was near Shinagawa Station. At Shinagawa Station, we had trouble finding the way to Fujikyu Highland, but thankfully my mom understand Japanese so she asked few people on how to get there. So after asking few people, my mom finally understand and bought the tickets, but we wasn't expecting that Fujikyu Highland was located far away from our station and using the normal train to get there was a bad idea.
At 8.45AM we got in our first train. I want to tell you how to to Fujikyu Highland, but it was so complicated, i didn't even remember where we change station or what line that we use. Japan Railway is really complicated because there are many lines, and Fujikyu Highland was located in Fuji, that is outside of Tokyo. So its very hard to use normal train. You can use bullet train called Shinkansen that could take you there faster but its more expensive and you need to booked it first because they reserve the seats.
You know its hard just by looking at the map.
After two and a half hour of changing trains, and getting in and out in many stations, we finally arrived in the last station that head to Fujikyu Highland. The last station was very unique and looked very vintage. The train that we're going to take was very cute because it has a Thomas the train theme as the design. Near Fujikyu Highland there is Thomas Land, so they use that as a design for the train.
That is my mom and she is posing right in front of the entrance to the station.
and this is my dad, right behind him is the Thomas theme train.
(Please mind my parents posing so weirdly....)
After we got on the train, we finally heading to our last stop, FUJIKYU HIGHLAND!!!!
Fujikyu Highland have two type of of tickets, one is the entrance ticket only and the other one is 1 day free pass ticket. The difference is the entrance ticket, you only pay for getting into Fujikyu Highland but when you want to go on a ride, you need to pay for it first. As for the 1 day free pass ticket, you can get on every ride without paying it. Of course the entrance ticket is cheaper, but if you are planning to get on every ride, the 1 day free pass ticket is the better choice. I also bought the 1 day free pass ticket. Inside the amusement park, you already could see all the huge roller coaster track and you could not just be amazed by it, and see how it works before decide to ride it. The first roller coaster I see right after getting is the Eejanaika. Right after I saw the ride, my jaw just dropped. Eejanaika is one of the Guinness world record holder for most turn roller coaster in the world.It was terrifying but looks so much fun at the same time. My brother rushed me to get into the line right after that.
Eejanaika, a Guinness world record roller coaster.
Before queuing, I look for the info on how long is the queuing time. IT WAS 3 HOURS LONG. I was so surprised because when I went to Disneyland few days before, the longest queue was at Space Mountain and that was 2 hours. I wasn't expecting the queue would be that long because that day, it felt like not many people came but yet a ride could take 3 hours long queue?! Also, the difference in Fujikyu Highland and Disneyland is that in Fujikyu Highland, there is only lines. No interaction video, no funny characters that could talk, and no cool design that you could take photo with. The only entertainment while waiting was talking to your friend. But since I was waiting with my brother, we pretty much got bored waiting for three hours. When we finally stood right in front of the entrance to get into the ride, it was exciting again. We could not wait until we sit in that roller coaster. So after we got in, and sat there. My blood just rushing full of excitement!! and I didn't watch any video about eejanaika so i really don't know what to expect.
After i took the ride, the conclusion is that THE RIDE WAS SO MUCH FUN!! Right after it starts, i didn't know that it will moved backwards, and when we went up, we literally facing down because the chair literally rotates 360 degrees. It was one of the most exciting experience I've ever had. All that memories of 3 hours queueing just went away. Definitely worth to try!! and if you really want some spoiler of the ride. You could go check this review video!
On my next post, I will write all the rides that I took in Fujikyu Highland. So please anticipate!! You don't want to miss it. For further info of Fujikyu Highland, go check their website here ---> Fuji-Q Official Website
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