blog

Here we are in Hong Kong, on part one of K80 and mitcho’s haphazard trip to China. Let our mistakes give you wisdom.

We were coming in from Taiwan a.k.a. the Republic of China. If you’re a Republic of China national¹ you can get a visiting permit from Taiwan. But if you’re a foreigner in Taiwan, you have to stop in some other country to apply for a Chinese visa. (China can’t have an embassy in Taiwan, because Taiwan is part of China! Duh.) Thus, we’re spending this weekend in Hong Kong.

Lesson 1: If applying in Hong Kong, give yourself a good weekday or two

Here’s the deal. You can apply for a Chinese visa at China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR. They’re open Monday through Friday and, for express service, you need to get the visa to them before noon (1:30 at some travel agencies) and pick it up in the evening—you can’t pick them up, either, on the weekend. You may have heard that you can get a Chinese visa even on the weekend: this is only if you have a longer layover in the Hong Kong airport, and you can get the visa in transit—you can’t get the visa on the weekend just by going to the airport.

As our flight to China is scheduled for this coming Sunday, that means we need the visa today. In our case, as our flight came in around 11 this morning, this meant an adrenaline rushing couple hours to apply for the visa before a travel agent’s 1:30 deadline. When we finally applied for our visas, though, we encountered another surprise.

Lesson 2: China just raised visa fees for US citizens. Because they love us.

Normally a single-entry visa to China costs HK$150 for most countries, plus whatever expediting charges. Fine. But going to China just got more expensive. As of January 20th, 2008, the base fee for US citizens went up to HK$1020. Not for everyone—just for US citizens. Because they love us.

Now you know.

Related posts:

1. Survival Tips for Visiting Taiwan: Part of the series: K80, mitcho (+Magi!)'s haphazard trip to...
2. Hong Kong: Part of the series: K80, mitcho (+Magi!)'s haphazard trip to...
3. 北京 Part 3: The Great Wall of China! and noodles: Part of the series: K80, mitcho (+Magi!)'s haphazard trip to...
4. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei: Part of the series: K80, mitcho (+Magi!)'s haphazard trip to...
5. Doing your Taiwan Fulbright taxes: Part of the series: K80, mitcho (+Magi!)'s haphazard trip to...

関連記事は Yet Another Related Posts Plugin によって表示されています。

Tags: airport, China, Hong Kong, surprise, Taiwan, visa, weekend

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed (optionally with tweets from my Twitter)!

This entry was posted on 金曜日, 1 月 25th, 2008 at 6:42 am and is filed under travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.