Passport pain

I took my wife and son to the Immigration Department yesterday morning. The main reason was to apply for a passport for my son but we noticed that my wife's passport was almost near the expiration date too. So it was timely for her to renew her document as well.

We thought that it being the day after the Chinese New Year holidays, the Immigration Department would be near empty. Boy, were we wrong! The first sign of a bustling day ahead of us was when we couldn't find a place to park near the department. Eventually, I had to park quite a distance away.

On entering the building, this was the scene that greeted us: a fully packed hall with people lining up to get their numbers, people waiting for their documents to be processed, more people waiting to pay their passport fees and of course, people collecting their new passports. From the crowd, you'd think that there was an exodus to get out of the country!

Eventually, we managed to get everything done by 4p.m. by which time it was impossible for us to do anything more except return home. We'll still need to go back to the Immigration Department at nine o'clock today to collect the passports, though.