As you may know, we’re traveling to Australia in a few weeks.  Three weeks out, it finally dawned on us that we still haven’t gotten our travel visa yet and we need to get on it ASAP.  Since we have passports from one of the few countries that are allowed to apply for an electronic visitor visa to Australia, we thought it would be quite simple: fill out the form online, pay the $20AUD fee, and and be on our way.  The whole electronic visa process is supposed to be hassle free with a high acceptance rate of 99.8%.  But nothing is ever easy or hassle free when I travel, and it turns out that I am in that special 0.2% that got rejected – with no explanation and also no refund for the $20AUD fee. So this post is not so much about travel tips as it is things you should not do from my personal experience.

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