Heading to China

Yes!
It's been long time coming, and it is finally happening. I'll be taking a full three months' worth of time to experience some of south-west China.

I have to start with saying - you've gotta love Google!
Google is quite famous for perks and food, but really - letting me take a 3-months off to do my thing and come back - that's the real deal. So thank you!

And yes, Google is hiring massively.  Check it out.

And now that we've got that out of the way - there is quite a lot to prepare. Over the next two months or so, I'll be sharing some of that enjoyable part of preparation, Travel planning, etc. Just to get everybody into the right spirit and to prepare you for the proper stories ahead.

The blog seems more or less set, some basic monetization is in place (we call it dogfooding), so we're more or less ready to get going.


It's gonna rock!


Visa For China - what is the maximum stay possible

This seemed all along quite straightforward to me. 90 days is kind of a standard tourist visa length, which seemed to be fully in line with my plans anyway. Alas, as I was booking my flight, and had about 24 hours to confirm-pay, I realized that my plans were to be in China for what might be closely calculated as 91 days.

So, as I was trying to run around figuring out how to calculate properly the maximum length of stay on a tourist Visa, I quickly learned on the internet, that there are no really clear rules about the length of Visa you can actually get (never mind how you count). It seems that in the US, for example, one can get a maximum stay of 30, 60 or 90 days - depending on the state in which you apply.

Very commendable!  Since it was already late in the afternoon, I sent an email to the chinese embassy at around 18:00, hoping to get some sort of hint the next day about the length of time I can expect to be allowed on the Visa. You see, it's a chicken-and-egg thing, as you're officially supposed to have your ticket booked when you apply for the Visa.
I received an answer at 21:00 the same evening! Wow!

Unfortunately, the answer was not highly revealing, mainly quoting their general online docs/ hints, and consular section opening hours. However, they did add to that: "usually tourist visa is only grnated for short terms", and "please note it is not recommended to book your flights before applying for Visa".
Hah ...

To make the long story short - in Dublin, you are allowed to apply for a Tourist visa for up to 60 days.
However, while getting a 61-day visa is virtually impossible, it is very straight forward to to just get a double-entry visa with the same length.
This actually means an overall stay of up to 120 days. So they won't let you stay for 90 days, but if you cross the border once, you can actually stay easily for 120.


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