Hi Guys,

I'm going to change my student visa to a work visa and I have to leave China to do this. Can anyone tell me which is the easiest and/or quickest place to handle the work visa procedure?

Where do most people in kunming go to sort out their work visa? And what experiences have you had in Hanoi, Vietnam or Hong Kong?

Thanks,

Hello,

Unfortunately you havenot many option about that .The Office of The visa which will give you the Visa Notification document will decide weather you have to travel to your own home country or other places.If your work place has a strong relation with them they will sort the paper for you to hongkong .Vietnam is a good option if regulations allow it.Its for sure more cheaper than Hongkong .

Hi,

Going to Viet Nam requires a Vietnamese visa and the airfare is more than Hong Kong. Most people seem to do their work visas in HK these days. Your employer needs to specify which country you will go to on the paperwork. Cheapest option: fly (or take the train, slow but cheap) to Shenzhen, then hop over to HK (see related thread "Metro/train from Shenzhen to HK?"). Processing time at Chinese embassy is 4 days, including day you apply. Chungking Mansions on Nathan Rd. in Kowloon (HK) is affordable place to stay, no reservation necessary. Have fun!

Cheers for the advice. My school has offices in Vietnam and they said that It's fine for me to go there to handle my visa. In regards to travelling, I have a motorcycle and I will try and cross the border (I done this with Laos, so, I imagine Vietnam is also fine to cross border with motorbike). But really my question is which visa office is less likely to cause me hassle or stress out of Hanoi and HK. I've had friends who applied in the philippines and were turned down. Previously, when I was living in Taiwan I went to Macao and I was successful but flights/hotels are expensive.

Mr explorerred

More details about the mansion in Hongkong please.Exact cost perday or phone number.
Jiangwu Vietnamese Visa is required in advance in Kunming it cost 350 Y.If you take bus and train down to Hanoi it will be more comfortable to you.Bus from East Bus station in Kunming to Hekou 135 Yuan .Then cross the Border take The Morning train to Hanoi costs 92000 Dong about 40 Yuan .9 Hours you done.

I checked qunar.com and the cheapest round trip to Shenzhen is 2500rmb. So, Hanoi is the cheapest option. So no-one has any experience with the chinese consulate in Hanoi in regards to visa issues????

Bangkok, Thailand is also an option. You'd have to compare flight prices, but it was relatively painless for me. I can give you directions to the Chinese Consulate if you decide to go for it.

If you go overland to Hanoi that probably would be the cheapest option. I have a friend who went there for his work visa and it was no problem. The main thing is to make sure you have all the required paperwork, which I assume your company will take care of. And for $15 to $20 a night you'll get a much nicer room than you would for the same money in Hong Kong. If you take the train from the border to Hanoi, ignore the taxi drivers at the train station when you arrive; there are plenty of cheap hotels you can easily walk to from the station. I recommend the Tung Trang Hotel; family run, good English, in the heart of the old quarter and quiet. Email: tungtranghotel@yahoo.com. Or check out www.travelfish.org for hotels anywhere in SE Asia; very handy website.

To Onlyone: There are many guesthouses in the Chungking Mansions building. The New York Guesthouse is clean and cheap, about 160 HK dollars. Sorry I lost their phone number, but their English isn't so good anyway and you don't need a reservation. If one place is full when you arrive, there are literally dozens of others in the same building.

Can anyone confirm if getting a visa from Hanoi?

Why people come in here asking for help but then never post how they resolved their issue? WTF ???

When I was in Hanoi last year, the consular section of the Chinese embassy was not issuing tourist visas to anybody who was not Vietnamese or a resident of Vietnam (i.e. can't apply for a Chinese tourist visa if you're in Vietnam on a tourist visa). But there are services that will take your passport to Saigon, where they do issue Chinese tourist visas. I believe turnaround time is something like a week, but I'm not sure.

You can get a Z visa in Hanoi if you have an official Chinese government visa invitation letter instructing you to present yourself at the Hanoi consular section to get your visa. The city where you want to receive your visa is something that you indicate on the application form for the visa invitation letter. Be warned that the Hanoi visa office is small and understaffed and seems to deal with a huge volume of Vietnamese applicants, so they may not stick to their declared timeline for issuing even Z visas. I suspect this workload is why they will not issue tourist visas to people who are not citizens or residents of Vietnam.

Also, the Kunmming->Hekou->Lao Cai->Hanoi route is scenic, but the night buses to Hekou has serious thief problems and the train from Lao Cai to Hanoi suffers from perhaps an abundance of rustic charm (though you can also do that leg by bus). Apparently a faster and smoother way from Kunming to Hanoi is to go through Nanning and enter Vietnam in Guangxi. Never done this personally, though.