Getting a Chinese visa…
On Friday I went to the Chinese embassy here in Ulaanbaatar. I need to get a visa because I am headed to Suzhou in a week and a half. I will be a chaperone for our basketball team that is playing in our division tournament there.
There are two forms I have to fill out. The first is the standard visa application and the second is a supplemental that I have to fill out because I am applying outside of my home country. The application is pretty quick except for the part where they require you list any previous trip to China (this is my fourth) and any countries you have been to in the last year.
Included in my application is proof of the flights, hotel reservation, a letter from the host school inviting us to attend, the tournament schedule, and notarized forms that show that the chaperones will be the legal guardians of the students on the trip.
I had to miss a few classes to get to the embassy on Friday morning. The traffic was pretty bad too. We arrived at the embassy and the driver saw the door closed with a sign on it. That is when we remembered that it was Chinese New Year week.
I get to go back to the embassy and try again on Monday.
I once tried to get a Chinese visa on Chinese new year… I had the same luck.