Figuring out the logistics of my trip was somewhat intense. The People’s Republic of China (or as we all know it, China) requires US citizens to hold a tourist visa for entry. Unfortunately for me, I live in one of the few places in the world that does not have a diplomatic mission of the People’s Republic of China, so I was unable to apply for a tourist visa without leaving Taiwan for several business days (if you’re interested in knowing about the 176 countries that have a diplomatic mission of the People’s Republic of China, please click here). Luckily for me, China has a “144 hour transit without a visa” (TWOV) policy that allows travelers from some countries to stay in China for up to 144 hours visa-free. The catch is, that one must a) fly to China from one country and depart China to a different country (for me, Taipei -> Hong Kong -> Chengdu -> Taipei (for the purpose of TWOV, Hong Kong and Taiwan are considered separate territories from China)) and b) stay in the original arrival port of entry.
Booking my flight was a whole other thing. I opted to fly with Sichuan Airlines because they had the most affordable direct flights to and from Taipei. However, due to the TWOV rules, I could not simply fly directly from Taipei to Chengdu. I attempted to book a flight from Hong Kong to Chengdu to Taipei on Sichuan Airlines’ website, which utterly failed. Their website wouldn’t accept my phone number as an acceptable point of contact and kept asking for my address but telling me my address was wrong. At the end of the day, I ended up calling Sichuan Airlines customer service to book my flight. The catch is that, despite clicking the “for English service please press 2” button, my customer service agent spoke no English. So, after about 30 minutes of back and forth in Chinese and an international phone bill, I received the sketchiest flight confirmation email in my inbox. The email had an attachement titled “itinerary.jpg” with no instructions on how to check in for my flight. Hooray.
Equipped with several boxes of pineapple cakes, a jacket for cooler weather, and an envelope of my screenshotted flight details and printed copies of the TWOV policy in Chinese and English, I set out on my adventure, unsure if I had been scammed by Sichuan Airlines. My flight to Hong Kong, albeit uncomfortable, was uneventful. I’ve never had less leg room on a flight. The Hong Kong airport is absolutely massive. After figuring out customs, which was slightly confusing, I went to check into my flight to Chengdu. I was very stressed about the whole thing, but my airline service agent was very kind. It took her a while to process my documents, but about 10 minutes later, I was issued my boarding pass, checked in my bag, and sat down at the Hong Kong airport McDonalds for a quick meal before heading through security. My flight was great; I was served a meal on the plane, which I didn’t expect given the 3 hour flight time.
When I landed in China, it took about an hour to get through customs. I had to go to the TWOV counter first to fill out some paperwork and get my entry permit. The whole thing went smoothly, it just took a while. After lots of waiting, I finally got through customs, grabbed my bag (the last one on the carousel), and met Amy! Yay!
Our journey from the airport to our hotel was…quite a time. Chengdu Tianfu International Airport is about an hour and a half from Chengdu by subway or car. Since it was late at night, we opted to take a shared taxi from the airport to our hotel. We ended up cycling through three different drivers before finally finding one who would accept our ride into the city. After we finally met up with our driver, he ran around for another half hour trying to find some more customers to add to our carpool. After tracking him down and exchanging some exasperated remarks, we finally left the airport. Our driver was somewhat erratic which was alarming given that it was raining. Thankfully, we made it to our hotel in one piece around 1:30am. Sadly, my prescription sunglasses fell out of my backpack in the taxi and have not been seen since.
The weather during our whole trip was lovely. It was between 68-75 degrees fahrenheit and most importantly, not ridiculously humid! Taipei was blazing hot when I left, and it was nice to get away from the heat, rain, and humidity.
