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How to Apply for Chinese Visa in Bangkok

*Edited March 14 2016 with hat tip to Mike Mason

The Chinese Visa Application Service Center has moved, as of Sept 2015. The new address is now 5th loor,1550 Thanapoom Tower, New Petchburi Road, Makkasan, Ratchathewi, Bangkok, Thailand, 10400. Visa / Passport photos are available on the 2nd floor, as are computers for printing out forms or documents. It is located at the Petchburi station on the Metro.

Applying for a Chinese Visa in Asia and especially in Bangkok as a foreigner can be troublesome. After a quick search through related forums can even increase the level of headache as everyone seems to give different advice. It doesn’t help much that some of the information is dated back couple of years.

There seems to be a discrepancy regarding what documents are required for Chinese Visa application. Looking at the information on Chinese Embassy Bangkok website it seems like an easy process, but reading comments online makes the whole thing quite a lot messier. Calling the Chinese embassy service isn’t much use either. I tried 3 times: morning, after lunch and before office closing without any luck. The last frontier seemed to be just to go on-site and see how it all goes.

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Inside 3D Printing Santa Clara 2014 Recap

We finally landed in San Francisco after two long flights. First one from Bangkok to Dubai took only 7 hours, and then another 15 hours from Dubai to San Francisco, where we continued by taxi to Santa Clara. Flights went well, luckily I got some sleep, and felt alright despite the 14 hours time difference. We stayed in Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, the hotel attached to the conference center. It was very pleasant stay in many ways (although it was slightly freakish of them to reply with commercial messages to my instagram posts about the show). The breakfast surprisingly served more than toast, bacon and eggs, and after five days I still fitted into the same pants.

The first conference day was mainly workshops, which I didn’t attend as we were quite busy putting our booth together and organizing interview schedule for 3DPI.TV. From what I heard from some of my friends who attended, the workshops were good. We managed to get two interviews done on the first day. The first one was with the couple behind Table Top Inventing: Steve and Debby Kurti. Both very nice and professional. Steve seemed to be more of the tinkerer and Debby taking care more of the admin side of things.

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Inside 3D Printing Santa Clara 2014 Preview

Inside 3D Printing travels back to the US next week to see the second show in Santa Clara Convention Center. Unfortunately I missed the show last year, but what I heard from our team that was present it was a great show. So, a lot to be expected this year as well. 3D Printing Industry is co-producing the show with the organizer MecklerMedia, and we have a team of four at present including the US based writer Scott J Grunewald, video producer Tony Hofmann, Ari and myself. We’ll have a booth at the show and will be filming video material as well as covering the show on 3dprintingindustry.com as usual.

The latest shows in Tokyo and Hong Kong were successful as always. Tokyo show attracted over 35,000 visitors in total for the cluster of tech shows bundled together. Despite being based in Asia, I do prefer the trade shows in the western countries. People in western countries are perhaps more extrovert and therefore easier to engage with. In Tokyo we did a small survey through a translator. Getting answers from the visitors seemed to be tricky even for the local translator.

The show in Santa Clara this year is coined to be quite big.

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Elon Musk – A Real Life Iron Man

Talking about inspirational entrepreneurs, many come to mind, but one is literally flying a lot higher (no pun intended :) than the others. Elon Musk, who even the Iron Man movie makers used as a role model for Tony Stark, is one of the most inspirational entrepreneurs out there today. Within a short period of time he has become successful in four different industries. And not just any industries, but some of the most competitive ones there exist. Starting from PayPal, which revolutionized the way we handle money online, he has moved to new ventures in power industry with SolarCity, automobile with Tesla and space travel and exploration with SpaceX. Considered crazy by his friends at the time he decided to focus on electric car that would survive in the tough car market – something that the car giants had not been able to accomplish, he has risen in the media spotlight with total three successful businesses today.

I have been familiar with the name Elon Musk for a long time, but only recently started to study more the way he works and his ideology towards creating successful businesses. He is quite a fascinating character who apparently clocks in 80-100 hour workweeks, sometimes even more.

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Bali Trip

I have been planning to visit Bali since I came to Asia early 2000, but never really had the chance to make it happen. Known to be a popular tourist destination amongst Australians and developed Asian nations, Bali attracts over 3 million tourists annually. The beaches and waves are famous amongst surfers, but Bali offers cultural sites and natural attractions as well.

A few weeks back I had a chance to finally visit Bali. Being more of a business focused trip, I didn’t unfortunately had much chance to enjoy the holiday activities, but had chance to get a glimpse what Bali is all about.

I arrived there Thursday afternoon and had no troubles getting through the airport procedures. Somehow the famous tourist destinations always make it very pleasant to enter. Finding a taxi to the hotel in Kuta beach was easy. The hotel I stayed in was a very positive experience. The staff was overwhelmingly friendly, included free breakfast that was more than instant coffee and toast. Overall the hotel, located right next to the beach, was bargain for the price. If you are planning to stay in Kuta and want an inexpensive hotel next to the beach check out Best Western Kuta Beach.

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