In a bit of a sticky situation right now
I am volunteering in the Catanduanes for a month with All hands and hearts. I bought the flights - all six of them - the van and bus tickets, requested PTO, etc. I’m $1.6k down and I applied for a visa a month ago. My flight is on Monday night (two days from now).
Last night the embassy turned back my visa for resubmission because they want a notarized sponsorship letter from my volunteer organization, which AH&H cannot provide. I just submitted a pdf explaining that they cannot offer this this morning and hoped for the best. Not sure if they can process my stuff this close to travel.
Here are my options:
Don’t rebook anything and fly without a visa and maybe get turned around at Manila
Spend another $700 for rebooking to come home earlier - in 14 days, which is permitted for Chinese citizens without a visa application (I booked through Trip.com and they have a $400 change fee even though changing it through Starlux is a lot cheaper)
Don’t go at all. I can get maybe like $500 back in flight refunds. The issue is that I have literally planned everything around this trip and so this would be super inconvenient.
What do we think? What is the best option here?