Tag Archives: visa

January 19, 2009

Overstaying a Chinese Visa

Overstayed

For all the foreigners traveling to China under tourist or student visas: just yesterday evening, I experienced the procedure that you have to go through at the border, in case you happen to overstay in the country. I looked up in the net (as i knew i was in overstay) before approaching the border and in the traveling forums i found many discordant posts. Some guys managed to get away with no fine even with a 10 days overstay, while couple of people even got imprisoned for some time for only 1 day of overstay and fined for thousands of RMB (chinese dollars). Ok so here it follows my experience: I overstayed my visa for 1 day only and I have been kept by the immigration police for several hours, questioned regarding the reasons of my overstay and finally let go without any fine payed but with a warning note (as a first time offender). Anyway I had the chance to ask an official and according to the law, if it’s the first time you get caught, you can overstay for 1 to 10 days without paying any fine or going to detention, you will be free to leave after having signed the warning letter. If you overstay for 11 days to a year you will have to pay a fine of 500rmb per overstayed-day to a maximum of 15000rmb and after that target you risk to be imprisoned for a maximum of 21 days. In addition, fines and penalties are entirely up to the officer’s discretion: according to his mood he shall decide your fate (but still within the law boundaries). This is just for first time offenders, but i didnt ask for those who are unfortunately making the same mistake for the second time…

May 10, 2007

Visa problem in Taiwan

Im just back from the immigration office, they denied the extension of my tourist visa. Apparently the only way to get a renewal is to cross the border, get the exit stamp and turn back in even a minute later. The only issue is that this country is an island, therefore I’ll basically need to fly out to the nearest or cheapest destination. Let’s see if I can find an alternative solution. I really like Kaohsiung and I would be very happy if I could stay here longer, go jogging every day at the sunset, work on my tan during the day and ride the motorbike along the coast getting the marine breeze on my face, watching the ships at the harbor, reading the their names and where they come from; dreaming of getting on board somehow and finding myself in another other part of the world.