Obtaining a Chinese Tourist Visa whilst in Hong Kong

broudie

Hi.

My partner and I are travelling to Hong Kong for a week, in December, and from there we are going to Shanghai for another week. I have been to China twice before, and both times obtained a tourist visa from the embassy offices in Manchester, for the sum of £30. The service involved submitting your application in the morning, and going back in the afternoon to collect.

Imagine my suprise when I notice that the fee has more than doubled to be over £65 to include the processing charges (what were you paying for in the first place I ask??), from the new visa service. Plus it now takes 3 days, so means a minimum of 2 mornings off work (live in Sheffield, and would go to the Manchester office) - given that the postal service is even more extortionate. (I've read the other MSE threads on this matter...). £130 extra on the trip is an awful lot of money (especially as you also have to pay an exit tax when you leave China!)

I thought it might be an option to get a Chinese Visa whilst in Hong Kong - it takes the same amount of time, but would appear to cost about half of what it costs here. The official HK visa office site says they only process visas for HK residents, but the site:

gohongkong(dot)about(dot)com

says that they do in fact process visas for non-HK residents.

Does anyone have any experience of obtaining a visa whilst in HK? I'm conscious of the risk of getting to the middle of our trip and not being able to go on to the 2nd half of it... However, if it really is a straightforward and robust process, then I'd be much more relaxed about waiting until we were in Hong Kong...

littlereddevil

When we went to Schenzen British people were queueing up to buy visas to get in.

broudie

From what I've read, Shenzen has a special visa of it's own, because it's so close to HK - for people basically wanting just a 'taste' of real China..