Hi there - thanks for the information.

My partner and I are currently in Vietnam and had planned to travel overland (train/bus) into China from Hanoi. We spent two mornings trying to get our visas from the embassy in Hanoi and were told after queueing for 2 hours on the second day that tourists (non-residents) to Vietnam cannot apply for visas there. They could not tell us if it would be possible in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) or the consulates in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand etc.

We'd hoped that Hong Kong, or even Seol (Korea) would be a runner but by the sounds of things that won't be much better for us. What do you think?

Things are ambiguous here also because tour operators don't seem to know anything about this, and I read a post on Thorntree (April) that said one couple managed to get there's after 5 days, paper flight tickets in and out of China, a letter confirming a booking from a hotel, etc.

Our Vietnamese visa runs out in a week so we need to decide what to do quickly. At this point it looks like we'll just have to omit that fascinating country from our world tour.... Any advice???

If only we'd known all of this before we set out travelling 3 months ago... we'd printed the forms back in March, just before this happened. So frustrating - I was really looking forward to it. It makes so little sense!

Lesley.