Applying for your Chineese Visa

We have so many amazing trips in our Tailor-made pages on the website cruise.co.uk.

There is a trip due to depart in a few weeks time including a grand tour of China visiting Beijing and the great wall and travelling south to Xian to see the Terracotta Warriors and the giant pandas before taking a river cruise along the Yangtze! There is then a short flight to Hong Kong where they join a cruise for 7 nights to Vietnam. My customers choose to spend 3 nights at the end in Singapore.

Before they travel they had to obtain a visa for China – Vietnam is visa-free at the moment but this does keep changing!

They found the process a little timely! They applied about 3 months before. The application form is about 8 pages long and you do need to take your time when completing the form so that everything is correct.

They require a full list of your itinerary. It is no good just saying we are on a trip with Buffalo tours. They need every hotel name and destination you are visiting.

You can apply via a company called CIBT who check all the information is completed correctly before you make an appointment in 1 of the offices to have your fingerprints taken.

There are 3 offices in London, Manchester and Edinburgh.

Make sure you take with you..

• Your visa application form
• Passports
• Photocopy of your passports
• Passport photos
• Via appointment sheet
• Letter of invitation from the tour company
• Full itinerary including flight details and hotel names

I would allow the full day for this. My guest forgot to photocopy the passport and to take a photo so this delayed the process. It took about 5 hours including the mix-up

They only accept debit cards or cash so be careful and make sure you have the funds

For the 3 of them, they paid just over £400

You then make an appointment to collect the visa in approx 4 days time or you can choose to have them posted – this was approx £30pp

The office was very pleasant and the staff really friendly.

Best tip is to double check and triple check before your appointment!

I will let you know in a few weeks how they got on! Bet they have an amazing time!

Thanks for reading!

Love Rosie xxx