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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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bossface
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
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 Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 5:57 am Post subject: PEK (Beijing) airport (and CAN) |
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| is there anything to do at PEK (or CAN?) i'm looking at flights to various Southeast Asian spots, and the Chinese airlines seem to be the cheapest by far. downside - they all require a long (8-10 hour) layover. in HK, BKK, wherever, no problem, i'd go into town to kill the long layover. in Mainland China, of course, this isn't an option unless i want to shell out for the visa, which i don't. is it worth it to save $200 on a flight if i have to kill 16-24 cumulative hours at an airport and fly a Chinese airline? |
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conbon78
Joined: 05 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 1:24 am Post subject: NO |
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| Depends...how much money is your time worth? And are you really saving $200 when you have to buy a Chinese visa? There is nothing around PEK (no idea about CAN)...it takes a long time to get into the city from what I remember. So pay more and fly direct. Less hassle plus those China airlines tend to screw people over - so you never know what might happen. |
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sweet_potato
Joined: 05 Jul 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:08 pm Post subject: |
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CAN is Guangzhou, right?
I had a layover there and it was awful.
All foreigners who were changing planes there were rounded off in a herd, they confiscated our passports and made us wait forever. They wouldn't tell us anything, and we were really worried about making our connecting flight back into Korea. Eventually, a man handed a random foreigner a box with all of our passports, and we pretty much attacked it like dogs, trying to fish out our passports quickly to make our connecting flights. We did make it - the plane waited for us, thankfully, we had to run the entire length of the airport to get on. And because of all this, we got assigned random seats on our flight back to Korea, so we couldn't even sit together. If you're going to have a layover in China, and you don't have a visa, you might have to wait in a tiny room. I know that this isn't how people are handled in every airport in China, but that was my experience in CAN.
Getting the Visa isn't really worth it for that short of time. I know that
Canadians get a free 48h visa in Shanghai, I wonder if something similar exists for Americans? |
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JBomb
Joined: 16 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Just had a long layover in Beijing on my way down to Malaysia. Like 5 hours or so to kill. There are plenty of little eateries and things inside the airport. Also found a nice quiet place to sit with my laptop and watch a bit of a movie and have a snooze. |
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cheolsu
Joined: 16 Jan 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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| sweet_potato wrote: |
CAN is Guangzhou, right?
I had a layover there and it was awful.
All foreigners who were changing planes there were rounded off in a herd, they confiscated our passports and made us wait forever. They wouldn't tell us anything, and we were really worried about making our connecting flight back into Korea. Eventually, a man handed a random foreigner a box with all of our passports, and we pretty much attacked it like dogs, trying to fish out our passports quickly to make our connecting flights. We did make it - the plane waited for us, thankfully, we had to run the entire length of the airport to get on. And because of all this, we got assigned random seats on our flight back to Korea, so we couldn't even sit together. If you're going to have a layover in China, and you don't have a visa, you might have to wait in a tiny room. I know that this isn't how people are handled in every airport in China, but that was my experience in CAN.
Getting the Visa isn't really worth it for that short of time. I know that
Canadians get a free 48h visa in Shanghai, I wonder if something similar exists for Americans? |
I had the same experience in Shanghai. I waited about 45 minutes, much longer than others, who waited about 10-15 minutes. This was comical because this comes after filling out an arrival card and clearing immigration. At one point, the doofus-in-charge gave me me my passport, but it turned out to be the passport of someone who'd walked away with yet another person's passport. |
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