Hello yes, hello. I have a dream to go to China. I have been learning the difficult tongue for 34 years and wish to put it to the test particularly in the high mountains, to whit, Yubeng.
Anyway how much mafan is it to get a tourist visa? It seems a pain in the butt. Anyone got any ideas? Why have they made it so hard
I want to fly HK to Kunming to Deqing.
Wow, that looks like a gorgeous place!
Isn’t it Deqin, not Deqing?
Make sure you don’t go in the winter, I tried a remote valley up there and we got snowed in (spring festival), ended up a few days in a village with roads closed both ways
And in the rainy season, another time I was up there, very dangerous
But i did a summer trip overland from Chengdu through Litang into Deqin, amazing roads. Litang has a famous horse festival, but I guess accommodation these days would be impossible (or take a tent, lots of grass up there)
Here, we were trying to go here. Weather was perfect in Dali, but blizzard on the way here
it used to be much easier.
book a hotel in the area first (must be one which can hosts foreigners, so it will be more expensive), then just go to HK in one of the shady agencies for visa handling, they’ll take care of it (many are in Mong Kok), used to go here:
http://www.fbt-chinavisa.com.hk/contact.html
What’s your nationality? US?
Answer is going to determine the amount of trouble you must go through to get a tourist visa.
I know they don’t take it easy on Americans because the US makes any visa application very onerous. I don’t know if a Chinese visa is onerous compared to Chinese getting a tourist visa to the us.
Also hotels must have permit in order to host foreigners, so many will not.
Are you still in Thailand, or do you plan to go again before then?
No idea how things are nowadays, but the Chinese consulate in Chiang Mai used to be pretty convenient for getting tourist visas. You could always go in and ask.
(Bangkok may also be an option, but they had a reputation for being more strict.)
I always just used to do cancellable bookings for the purpose of the visa application.
Yunnan used to be more lax on this stuff anyway (twice I had to convince the police that they’re supposed to register me within 24 hours because even they didn’t know the rules, and one of those times was in Kunming city center).
Yeah I used to fly CM to Kunming it’s definitely less hassle.
Yeah I’ve been around most of the areas there. Seen some amazing sights, wolves in a snowstorm etc. It seems it’s becoming a bit of a scramble to get to the last undiscovered places. I’ve seen blog posts on Yubeng saying there’s rubbish everywhere. I was lucky enough to be the 13th big nose to get to the monastery above Yading some years ago. Now there’s an airport in Daocheng ffs and a high speed train to Zhongdian isn’t far away.
If you’re in a hotel, they register you.
In communist china, hotel registers you?
As far as I remember, if you book a hotel, the hotel will contact the police on your behalf.
yep, there must be a specific online link with the local PSB where they scan ur passport and visa, if you r hosted by an individual, such individual must first make an invitation letter for the visa issuance, then report you to the PSB unit within 24/48 hrs of your arrival.
Yeah, I know. I wasn’t.
The first part about cancellable bookings was to have a plausible itinerary for the tourist visa, while still having the freedom to wing it after arrival without needing to stick to the original itinerary.
Was responding to this.
But if you’re not in a hotel, then yea, ignore my post.
What do you do if you decide you don’t want to sleep?
Yeah, the issue I had in Kunming was that the police themselves had misinterpreted the rules and kept insisting that visitors needed to register if they were staying in a hotel but not if they were staying with friends etc. (i.e., the opposite of the actual rules, and nonsensical). They eventually agreed to register me despite saying I didn’t need to, but it was a lot of work. Normally I would have let it go, but I wanted to extend the tourist visa later so didn’t want to have any issues with not being registered.
I asked that too because I spent the first 24+ hours slowly travelling to Kunming and sleeping on a night bus. The police told me the first night I reached a place to stay was fine even if more than 24 hours, though that was probably just something made up on the spot rather than actual policy.
Is there any requirement to register if you went in with a Taibaozheng?
