July 17, 2009 – Day 204 – Hong Kong

Still intensely jet-lagged. Can’t seem to get to bed til 3am and can’t seem to wake up til noon or 1pm. But, the good news: we got our Chinese visas today! It was incredibly easy, much to our relief, but cost a little bit extra.

The view down our block

After our fantastic trip to the visa agency it was off for some much needed Thai food. The area we are staying in is full of Thai restaurants and we have been living it up. Today it was some tasty Hai’nam chicken.

Hai'nam chicken

Then it was off to the huge Kowloon city park. The park is massive, covering several city blocks right in the middle of Kowloon City. Not only does it have a giant swimming pool but it also has a waterfowl sanctuary, several large fish ponds, a Japanese garden, a Chinese garden and a large aviary with birds from all over the world.

In the middle of everything

It's a bird! It's a plane!....no wait, it's just a bird

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the macaws in the aviary and remembering the days we spent in Brazil which seem so far away now…

Travel Tip:

If you are not in your home country when you apply for a Chinese visa, you will likely run into a certain amount of hassle and possibly rejection. Also, the biggest issue with the Chinese visa is that you must have proof of lodging each night you are there, an exit ticket already booked and submit a full itinerary showing exactly when and where you will be while in China. We used an agency to help us get the visa with the least amount of hassle in the history of getting visas. The agency in Hong Kong (Kowloon) is called everbright (their website has changed a few times so a quick google search for “everbright chinese visa” should fix you up). They only had us fill out one form and took our passports before telling us to return in a couple of days to pick up the visas. They take care of submitting our “itinerary,” the lodging and exit transportation ticket proof so we dealt with nothing else. The charges are different based on how soon you want/need your visa (there is a next day service as well as regular 2- or 3- day services for cheaper prices). We paid US$180pp total (visa alone is $130) and it was well worth saving us the headaches that we would have had if we had tried to make the papers ourselves!