Chinese Visa: Applying in Ulaanbaatar

Here are a few notes of our experience applying for a Chinese tourist visa in early September 2009 in UB for anyone who is wishing to do the same thing or looking for info.

--The consulate is only open Monday, Wednesday and Friday and although they do not do next day service, for an extra $20 they do a 2 day service.

--In the consulate they say they require hotel bookings for the stay, return transportation and a statement of finances (bank printout).

--We requested a 90 day tourist visa submitted three items with the application/photo: (1) printouts of hotel reservations (unpaid for, unconfirmed, but made to look as official as possible, from www.sinohotel.com), (2) printouts of air itineraries for flights to and from China that we got from Air Market in UB (unpaid for, unconfirmed) (3) a printout of our bank statement from online.

--We got the full 90 day visa with no problems. We've heard of others being refused double-entry visas due to sketchy reservations and heard people being questioned about the validity of their reservations, but so far no one we've heard from has been flat-out refused, at a minimum they seem to get 30 day single entry....
--We did hear that some people had not printed a bank statement, nor made hotel reservations for the entire stay, but since all of our reservations were free, we figured why not?

Hope this helps!