15 June
Day 202: Hangzhou - Shanghai
Hello Shanghai, finally we arrived to famous city of fashion and nightlife. We dropped our bags at Eloi’s place (also couchsurfer we knew from Barcelona, and then met in Bangkok and Hong Kong during our travel) and went to the Russian Consulate to check out if we can submit papers for our Russian visa.
The consulate was closed, but at least we found out where is it and the schedule for tomorrow. Everywhere in the internet they said it is impossible to get visa for Russia in China, if you are not Chinese citizen or the resident. But we decided to try anyway.
What is important to know about Russian visa:
1. To get tourist visa for Russia you need the invitation from a Russian citizen or from the tourist agency.
2. In case you want to visit your friends or do Couchsurfing, obviously you don’t have any hotel booked and you can’t get the invitation (in case you want to ask your friend to invite you, it’s a really difficult bureaucratic, process that can take a month or so).
3. To get the invitation you need a ”help” of some tourist agency, which will send you one for a fee.
There are many sites that offer your visa support or invitation, like for example the following:
etc.
For the Russian visa in Shanghai Consulate they were asking for:
- Passport and a copy
- Valid Chinese visa and a copy (from the passport page)
- 1 photo 3.5x4cm
- An invitation from tourist agency (we had it from www.realrussia.com) for 16 euros
We printed our invitation on the color printer in one of the internet shops and were ready for tomorrow’s visa challenge.
We walked along the Bund and enjoyed the views of the Shanghai pearl tower.
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