Dear all,
My wife and I are planning an overland trip through Africa, starting in Cape Town and ending in Addis Abeba. We are carefully planning where to get the visa for the various countries we intend to travel to (and thanks for all I learned from reading as "guest" on this forum :-) ), and figured out for all countries what we can do best, apart from.... Zambia.
I have a Netherlands passport, my wife has a Chinese passport. It's the latter one that complicates things, as you apparently cannot get Zambia visa at the border in that case (which I can with Dutch passport).
Below our findings so far, and I would be curious to learn whether anyone has any advice for us.
1. Chinese passport holder cannot get the visa upon arrival (at the border).
2. We cannot apply in our country of residence in advance, as there is no Zambia representation in Malaysia (where we live).
3. We called the Zambia embassy in Windhoek, Namibia. As getting it there, before heading to Zambia, would be fine for us. They told us that is not impossible, however would take... 3 weeks. Which we consider too long, given that we also need to apply for our Botswana visa while in Namibia.
4. They told us though, that we can reduce this time by applying by email to "immighq@zamnet.zm", and stating that we want to pick up the visa in Windhoek. I send an email to this address to confirm this procedure, send a reminder as well... but I just don't get any reply.
5. We also called the Zambia embassy in Beijing. They are not exactly helpful, say something about "invitation letters" and when you ask a next question, they say they will connect you to a colleague - and the next thing you hear is the beeping from a disconnected phone line.
6. Travel agents in Beijing claim though that they can arrange the visa for us (for a very high fee though).
So the options we figured out are:
- go for a 3-week procedure from Namibia
- travel all the way to Beijing first before going to Africa, pay a huge fee to an agent, and hope that it works.
Is there any advice out there still....anything else we can do? Anyone experience with getting Zambia visa for a Chinese passport holder?
