China visa in Luang Prabang - Success!

We just got our Chinese visas in Luang Prabang! After wandering around town asking every single travel agency whether we could get visas here and being told by every single one that we would have to go back to Vientiane, we happened upon a very real Chinese Consulate-General with a big and very permanent plaque outside listing their opening times for visa applications. Mysterious! The tourist information office in Luang Prabang can tell you roughly, but not exactly, where the consulate is, so I will do my best to describe the location here.

It is on a seemingly nameless little side street of Phu Vao Road, one down/east from Manomai Road. If you are walking from the city centre eastwards along Phu Vao Road, this street is one after Manomai and just after the big Manoluk Hotel. There are no signs for the consulate on the corner, but there are signs for the La Pistoche swimming pool. You can see the consulate immediately after turning the corner, it is less than 100 m down the street and it is big and yellow with enormous Chinese lanterns at the front. Hope that's clear enough!

The visa hours are Monday to Friday 9-11:30 am. We arrived at 9, handed over our documents, requested an express visa, went to pay the fee (usd 62 per visa, though normal 4-day processing would have been only usd 32) at the bank down the street and were handed back our passports with visas at around 10 am!

The documents we needed:

• 1 copy of our passports
• flight bookings in and out of China (we got these at All Lao Travel Service, 13/7 Sisavangvong Road, for usd 5 per person for two fake flight confirmations in and out of the country)
• confirmations of hotel bookings (we booked six hotels on Booking.com and printed the confirmations)
• an itinerary (just a word document stating where we were planning on going on which dates)
• a copy of a bank statement (print out from online banking is fine, as long as it mentions your name)

We also brought copies of drivers licenses, proof of employment and insurance papers but they weren't interested in those.

The staff at the consulate are really friendly and helped us to fill out the application form, then sent us off to pay the fee at a bank 10 minutes down the road. When we got back, we waited for about 15 minutes and then walked away with our visas in the pocket!

Did they ask for flights and accommodation confirmation before you produced them? Just wondering if you'd have got the visa without them.

And could you also post this on the China Visa Guide on that Branch.

The first thing they did when we walked in was ask for flights and hotel bookings. Apparently a train ticket with your name on it can also work (but there are no trains from Laos to China). A bus ticket will definitely not work.
We did not have hotels booked for our entire itinerary, just the first six, but they had a good look at the confirmations for those so I'd say that without any you wouldn't get very far!

Good news! Thanks for posting details, very useful information to have on here.

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