So we’re going on holiday in China next month and went to the embassy here in Bangkok for our visas. There are three levels of payment depending on how fast you want the visa: Regular (4-5 business days), Express (2-3 business days) and Same Day. We’re not in a hurry, so we went with Regular. Dropped our passports off on April 10 and were told to return on April 18 (the long Songkran holiday made the waiting period longer).
When we got out passports back, we saw that the visas were issued on April 10, the same day we dropped them off. Both visas are clearly marked Issued 10 April, and it’s also clearly marked that we have until 10 July to enter China, not 18 July, which would br three months from the pickup date (you have three months to enter China from the time a 30-day tourist visa is issued to you). So I guess they issue visas the same day in every case, then hold onto the passport for a while unless you’re willing to pay extra.
This is no big deal, and we’re not put out by it at all – just usual Third World practice – so it doesn’t belong in the Pit, but it seems a bit odd to me that China would engage in this sort of low-level con. (My one previous trip to the Chinese mainland, my visa was taken care of for me by others, since I was there on business, and so I was not aware of the visa process. My wife’s one visit to the mainland, she didn’t even need a visa, since she was attending an international conference. Other than that, we’ve only been to Hong Kong and Macau, both of which you don’t even need a visa for ahead of time.) This is just something mundane to post, and I was curious if anyone else had encountered some sort of weird low-level scam perpetrated by someone or an organization you would have thought was above that sort of thing.