Visa for China

After our visit to tiger kingdom, for the next few days we tried to sort out a visa for China. There is an embassy in Chiang Mai, so we thought we'd stay for a few extra days to get it here. We went to the embassy and each got an application form. We spent a whole day planning and researching our itinerary for China. It's quite a stringent process for the visa, but you have to have proof of entry and exit out of China booked. Our dilemma is that we don't want to pay hundreds of pounds before we get the visa, only to be denied entry into the country. So we have decided not to book our flights until we get confirmation of the visa, then if it gets denied, we haven't lost any money.

Basic requirements of China visa;

(1) Passport

Original passport with at least six months of remaining validity and blank visa pages, and a photocopy of the passport's data page and the photo page if it is separate.

(2) Visa Application Form and Photo

One completed Visa Application Form with a recently-taken colour passport photo (bare-head, full face) against a light background attached

(3) Proof of legal stay or residence status (applicable to those not applying for the visa in their country of citizenship)

If you are not applying for the visa in the country of your citizenship, you must provide the original and photocopy of your valid visa or certificate of stay, residence, employment or student status of the country where you are currently staying.

(4) Photocopy of previous Chinese passports or previous Chinese visas (applicable to those who were Chinese citizens and have obtained foreign citizenship)

If you are applying for a Chinese visa for the first time, you should provide your previous Chinese passport and a photocopy of its data page.

If you have obtained Chinese visas before and want to apply for a Chinese visa with a renewed foreign passport that does not contain any Chinese visa, you should present the photocopy of the previous passport's data page and the photo page if it is separate, as well as the previous Chinese visa page. (If your name on the current passport differs from that on the previous one, you must provide an official document of name change.)

Supporting documents for a L tourist visa;

L Visa

Documents showing the itinerary including air ticket booking record (round trip) and proof of a hotel reservation, etc. or an invitation letter issued by a relevant entity or individual in China. The invitation letter should contain:

(1) Information on the applicant (full name, gender, date of birth, etc.)

(2) Information on the planned visit (arrival and departure dates, place(s) to be visited, etc.)

(3) Information on the inviting entity or individual (name, contact telephone number, address, official stamp, signature of the legal representative or the inviting individual)

Check the embassy website for more details for your own country etc. So we spent time booking hotels and creating the itinerary for our time in China. We went to the embassy the next morning to hand our application forms in, but guess what, it was only closed! I was so frustrated as it's Saturday, they are closed over the weekends. It never even occurred to us that the embassy didn't open at the weekends. But the worst was yet to come, as the Monday is a bank holiday, which means the embassy is closed then too, plus there are other days this week that the embassy won't be open. We can't hang around here any longer now as we've only got 2 months left until we fly home. We had already booked 3 more nights at our hotel, so we have to hang around here. We decided we're going to have to get a visa in Laos, there is an embassy in Vientiane, which can also process it in 4 days. Let's just hope that we can get it processed in time, or we won't be off to China for our last month!