We decided to go to Hong Kong because it is pretty easy and quick for foreigners to obtain a Chinese visa through the Chinese Consular Department Office. For many countries, visas are not required to enter Hong Kong. US citizens can stay in Hong Kong for 90 days without getting a visa. Getting a Chinese visa while in Hong Kong usually only takes a few days, but we would both recommend staying in Hong Kong longer to check out the city.

Before applying

The first time we went to the Chinese Consular Department Office, we were rejected right away. China is strict regarding visa requirements. They require you to have your way in, your way out, and all the places you will be staying in an itinerary. That means you need to pay right away and print out a hard copy of all your stuff. Since we didn’t really have any plans other than knowing we want to go to China, they told us we needed documentation. Luckily, there is a way to at least book your stay in China without having to pay everything up front. Booking.com allows anyone to book hotels and gives free cancellations. To make it even easier on ourselves, we chose the hotels that give the option to pay when first getting to the hotel, so that we didn’t have to watch any transactions after cancellation. We paid for our flights in and out right away, but it’s possible to cancel with travel insurance or finding out from the individual booking airlines cancellations options.

Getting to the Chinese Consular Department Office

Finding the Chinese Consular Department Office was a pleasant process. You can either take a ferry to Wan Chai ferry pier and walk for about five minutes, or take the metro to the Wan Chai station and only walk a few minutes. It made having to go back after failing our first time a little easier. On our second attempt, we had our itineraries. We went back to the Chinese Consular Department Office and they gave us a long application to fill out, and had us take our pictures. We had a little interview and they pulled me aside to discuss further if I would be writing about China. A little scary, but it worked out. We then paid the approximately $150 USD fee for Americans (ouch!). About four days later, we had our visas.

I found this article from Thrifty Nomads extremely helpful when we first started the process. You can find all the little details in the article. Thank you Thrifty Nomads!

JuneYao Air Review

After we failed to get our visa on our first trip, we wanted to hurry and get our itinerary in order. We like Hong Kong, but it is expensive. The first thing we had to do was get our flight to China. We checked flights using the Matrix ITA software by Google. We searched for the cheapest flights possible. We found some, but the problem with this software is that most of the time it requires you to order directly through the airlines to get the deal. When there websites are in another language, it complicates things.

We found that the cheapest flight we wanted was through JuneYao Air. We went to the website, and everything is in Chinese. There is an English option, but when you order the flight it switches back to Chinese. It made things super difficult as we had to trust google translate having crazy loose translations for everything. We also couldn’t check in at our flight time. To save some money, we decided to roll the dice a little.

The flight was only around $100 USD per person. They fit as many people in the plane as possible by leaving no room for your legs. They do give you food even for a two-hour flight. Besides the limited leg room, it was a good flight. There weren’t many foreigners on the flight. It was a good introduction to Chinese food, and the people in general. It was also very exciting to be going to Shanghai after the short wait for our visas.

Happy Travels!