Mainland China - visa appointment waiting time (or can I make the Transit visa work?)

mackerski

Hi,

A search hasn't yielded any up-to-date discussions of this, but I'll be humbly grateful if somebody can prove me wrong on that...

I will be visiting Asia in a small few weeks and would like to spend a few days in Shanghai. The 144 hour transit visa would be ideal for that and would avoid the complicated visa process, but from what I can see, Shanghai would need to be in the middle of a single interlined itinerary starting in not-Ireland (which is fine, HK is my plan), ending in Ireland (fine) and with a stopover of some days in Shanghai. I can't work out any reasonable way of booking such a ticket. I'll try breaking the habit of a lifetime and asking an old school travel agent, but does anybody have ideas?

Assuming (which I do) that I can't make the transit visa work, I see that the current process for obtaining the required L visa involves an online application process followed by the scheduling of a visit to the embassy in Dublin. I'm working through that online process now, but I expect from previous experience to have to give my flight confirmation, meaning paying for a flight before knowing whether my visa can be processed in time. Does anybody know how long it can take to be given an appointment at the embassy? Some online sources are talking about times of up to 2 months.

Thanks for any tips!

jhegarty

This is bookable as a single ticket.

Hong Kong -> Shanghai (Cathay Pacific)

Shanghai -> Doha (Qatar )

Doha -> Dublin (Qatar )

PommieBast

Things have almost certainly changed but when I got my M (business travel) visa back in 2016 it was only a week or two before I got my passport complete with visa back.

Padre_Pio

They have a booking system online.

I got mine a month ago and they had appointments free most days.

Book at day and a time but be there before 9.30am the day of the booking. It's very disorganized and apparently it's gets very busy after 10am.

Make sure you have all the paperwork printed off. Application form, passport, photos, flight details, hotel details, the have a list on the website. The whole process lasted 2 minutes, no questions asked. They checked the paperwork was all there, took a photo and fingerprints and I was told to come back in a week.

It takes 1 week to process and you pay when you collect the visa. A single entry visa cost 40 euro, which you need to pay either bank transfer (certain banks only) or postal order. I got a 40 euro postal order, which cost €44.50

€

mackerski

Yeah, thanks to all contributors - I ended up just getting the visa and, as mentioned, waiting time isn't currently an issue.