The last time I had to do a visa run was to HK, and before that, Manila, and that was two years ago. At that time, one of the requirements was that you have a letter addressed to you in your home country, in the form of a bill or some such, that proved you had a residence in your home country. This is of course for applying for the almighty visitor’s visa.
Well, I just did a comprehensive search of almost every immigration Web site I could find, including the de facto embassy’s web site in Manila, and there is no such requirement listed now. Can anyone confirm this?
I just got back from Manila. I was told clearly by the woman I spoke to at the desk (over phone handsets, through frosted glass with just three smallish stripes of clear glass to enhance human contact) not to bother wasting my money on the application as she knew I would be rejected.
I was trying to get 2 months by showing just a bank statement, as I had done a few times before recently in Hong Kong and Okinawa. (Okinawa was by far the smoothest experience - highly recommended.)
Maybe I should have applied anyway, but even if they gave me 1 month it is still better to get the “landing visa” (Visa-exempt stamp) as it is free.
And considering how awful the food is, I don’t really recommend Manila for trying to get 2 months or more. It should be fine if you have the letter from Education. The woman said it might have been fine if it was my first application of this sort. And it wasn’t her who decides - I believe her on this - it is an official posted in Philippines I believe.
Macau is also good these days. They just gave my friend 3 months on a request for 4 (or 6 maybe) based on a good story. Another friend says Macau phones Taipei to get the decision. I’m pretty sure Manila doesn’t and the current head honcho there prides him/herself on being just as tough to the rich-country bushiban teachers as to the local Filipinos.
I have recently had a bad experience with this office costing me a lot of money on a return trip. I called this particilar office long distance to find out exactly what I needed to get a 2 month tourist visa so i could get my ARC. You guessed it, they screwed up giving even routine information. What makes it even worse is that they could have cared less. For the sake of brevity I will not detail the number of mistakes they made or how shaken I was at how simple information could not be related to me. If you deal with this office you will become an expert on the subject of visas…they certainly are not.