Ruth,

I am about an hour drive to Los Angeles Consulate China office. We are leaving in November for China. All I need is just a tourist visa for 15 days tour. I am debating should I just let the travel agency do the visa instead of doing it myself. The extra cost is only $ 30, but we have 10 of us, so it can add up. I read somewhere here in the forum, that it is now require to show your bank account? You have to have a minium of $ 3000? This is just too weird of a requirement.

I just got my visa for myself and family (3 ppl total) two weeks ago from the Los Angeles China Consolate. I thought it was going to be very difficult, but it was very easy.

We went down on July 3rd (they close at 3pm so be careful to get there in time) and waited about 25 minutes. We handed over our applications and passports. They took all and told us to come back the next Tuesday and to pay then.

We're going for the Olympics. We're first flying into somewhere and then hoping on another flight into Sanya. In a week we fly back to Beijing for 9 days of the Games. I forgot to ask for a double entry visa, but got her attention right after I walked away from the window and she happily marked double entry on my forms. I was hesitant to part with our Passports for almost a week, but that's the way it works so we had no choice!

My husband went down and forgot the pink receipt paper. They wouldn't release my passport without me being there without the paper. They wouldn't release his passport and our babies either without releasing all 3 of them together. The next day he went back after finding the paper and got our passports, with the visas no problem.

It was a lot easier than I thought! I had more trouble getting into Australia with my visa since my name was spelled wrong. It was fairly easy. Maybe it was so easy because we wrote that we were going to the Olympics. We didn't even have to show plane tickets and hotel reservations like they stated in teh application. The hardest part was having to fork over $390 for the 3 visas after we've had to pay such elevated hotel and transportation prices already because of the Games.

I totally agreed on the price...it is expensive. I let my agent do it for extra $ 15 per visa so it is $145 each. It is worth it, since we don't have to drive from OC to LA, plus take a day off from work and another day off from work to pick it up.

I think the gas money alone justified the extra costs.