A Little Trouble in Big China

Our last post ended with somewhat of a positive, hopeful tone. This one will too, given that it is being written from a café at our hostel in Hangzhou (not much can beat a hot cup of coffee after the type of day we’ve had), but that’s because we have had to climb a mountain that we are only now starting to come down from. As we alluded to in our last post, China offers free 24-, 72-, and 144-hour visas for transit through China to another country. When we booked our tickets to Cebu, Philippines, we secured tickets from LAX to Hangzhou to Chongqing and finally onto Cebu.

We booked these flights on FareBoom.com for less than $800 for both of us. A pretty great deal, and their customer service was extremely helpful when we called to make sure our layovers qualified for the China Travel Without Visas (TWOV). Truly, the customer service agent went above and beyond, double checking with her supervisor, and referring us to various websites that would confirm our qualifications for both the 72-hour and the 144-hour visas. Only one hiccup: she was wrong.

At check-in gate A23 in LAX, after having to wait four and a half hours to be able to check in for the flight, sitting at the makeshift barriers and paths to insure we would be first in line, we were met with “We’re sorry but your itinerary doesn’t qualify for a visa to China.” Travel to and from China is notoriously difficult to do, but given that we had checked with multiple sources including our booking agency, China’s official tourism website, TripAdvisor and TravelChinaGuide.com we thought we were good to go. We were not good to go.

Now is as good of a time as any, if you are here for travel tips check with your airline at the time of booking to make travel plans through China. And be direct when it comes to clarification. We called our airline, Sichuan Airlines, but the language barrier made it difficult to insure that we would get the TWOV.

The next THREE hours were a dance of persistence. We were going on this trip. Ange’ls Odyssey has been years in the making, but this was the first step towards what it could truly be, in no way shape or form would something as small as international diplomacy and immigration policy turn that first step into a stumble.

After exploring every possible combination in order to make our itinerary work with the visa policies, we looked at the clock and it was past 11 PM. Our flight was slated to leave at 12:30 and began boarding at 12. An immigration officer came to talk to us about our itinerary and he said that we could book a flight from Hongzhou directly to Cebu with Sichuan for an additional cost of $169 per ticket. Our blog was going to be called “The Philippines in under $200,” so that was off the table.

At 11:30 with a half hour to board, we used the app Skiplagged to search for other flights out of Hangzhou, the first being from Hangzhou to Phucket, Thailand that would leave January 9th at 11 AM. Our flight to Hongzhou landed at 6 AM so to qualify for the 144-hour visa we would have to leave by 6 AM on the 9th. We found a part of the TWOV program on ChinaDiscovery.com that stated that the 144-hours starts at midnight the day of arrival, but again, the immigration officer did not give his approval so we couldn’t board the plane.

Finally, we found cheap flights from Singapore to Hong Kong on Skiplagged for $84 with China Eastern Airlines, booked it, sent the itinerary to immigration, checked-in and left for Hangzhou after sprinting the circuitous and overly lengthy path to gate 38.

If that seems like a lot a crazy story to leave the America, entering China was the overdone sequel.

Met with men and women in green military uniforms who at times look as though they wanted to kick it with us later in the day, but at other times seemed as though it was their patriotic duty to protect the People’s Republic of China from two travelers from the California.

Because of our last-minute trip, we hadn’t booked a place to stay. In all honesty, we hadn’t booked a place to stay with our original trip either, but that’s neither here nor there. Because we didn’t have an address to stay in China, we were held at the immigration investigations office until our plans were set. We went to HostelBookers.com and found Hangzhou Fiona’s Trip Youth Hostel, where we are comfortably staying now. It took multiple tries due to lack of WiFi and because we neglected to set travel alerts with our banks, but eventually we had an address and a place to sleep in Hangzhou.

All in all, it took two hours and countless hopeful, questioning thumbs up from us to the officers who responded with a tepid grin and a “so-so” motion of the hand.

Four large military officers entered the room, and we thought that this was the end of the journey to China. We would board a plane and head back to the United States. One of the men passed along a piece of paper to the officer at the desk, which we assumed was the order to escort us back to the terminal, the man looked at us, stamped our passports, gave us a toothy, full smile and welcomed us to China.

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