The Adventures of Tingting

How to Apply for a Chinese Tourist Visa (Cebu City, Philippines)

/ Christine Layumas / 45 Comments

I’m such a sucker for airline promo fares and this time, we booked cheap tickets to China! I’ve always wanted to go to the Great Wall but I always hesitated because there’s currently no direct flights to Beijing or Shanghai from Cebu. (EDIT March 2018: There’s already a direct flight from Cebu-Shanghai through China Eastern Airlines) Also, China is one of the countries where a US citizen needs a tourist visa. :/

There’s definitely a first time for everything and this was the first time that I myself applied for a tourist visa! I was a little nervous, since I don’t have a lot of stamps in my Philippine passport.

First and foremost, I would like to let everyone know that the Chinese Consulate has opened again in Cebu on March 2017. Don’t bother searching it in Google because the address there is still the old address. I’m not sure why they didn’t bother to change it considering a lot of people follow what they see online – like me! It’s super misleading! We actually went to the Cebu-Fil Chinese building before the guard there directed us to its new location, at the Mandarin Plaza Hotel. So this is the complete address and contact number (where someone actually picked up) of the current Chinese Consulate in Cebu:

Chinese Consulate Cebu
25th Floor, Mandarin Plaza Hotel
J. Solon Dr, Cebu City, Cebu
(032) 505-1035
They only pick up from 9am-11am. You may also try to contact Mandarin Hotel (032 266-1111) and have your call forwarded to the Chinese Consulate if you can’t contact their number.

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Seattle, WA – Day 1

/ Christine Layumas / Leave a comment

January 7, 2017

I went on a quick visit to my family in Los Angeles for New Year’s. I stayed there for a month so my sister and I had to plan a last minute sister out-of-state-trip. We initially planned on going to New Orleans but the plane tickets to Seattle were much cheaper and the weather was bad at New Orleans at that time.. not that Seattle’s was any good. It rained a whole lot during our visit. lol

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Universal Studios Hollywood

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Jan 6, 2017

After battling jetlag, I finally got out of my bed and went out of the house. Lol I bought a Universal Studios Annual Pass from Costco for USD 110. The one day pass for that day was USD 105 so I just got the annual pass. I can still remember back in 2004-2007ish, day passes were only USD 39 for California residents and they would have a promo of buy one day and get the whole year free. I can’t believe it has almost tripled now but nonetheless, people are still flocking into the park especially now that the Harry Potter World has opened.

The last time I was in LA, the Harry Potter World was still closed. I just took this photo after exiting the studio tour back when I visited on January 2016. I told myself that I had to go back again this year to visit the newly opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter…

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Rome: Day 1

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July 8, 2016

Onto the last city of our Europe trip! We took the morning train from Florence and arrived after about an hour and a half. We were very excited to be in the historic city of Rome!

When we were on our train from the hotel to our first stop (the Trevi Fountain), we witnessed a local from Rome snatching a Korean’s bag right when the train doors were closing. The snatcher hurriedly ran and the Korean girl’s boyfriend forcibly opened the train doors and rain after the snatcher. It was a scary thing to witness on our first train ride in Rome so we got extra careful with our belongings after that.

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Florence and Pisa

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July 6, 2016

We initially planned to just go directly to Rome from Venice and do a day trip to Florence and Pisa because I thought about how hard it was to move from one city to another with our luggage. But I wasn’t sure if doing a day trip to both cities would give us enough time so we just looked for a hotel near the train station in Florence and stayed there for two nights.

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Our Last Few Days in Paris

/ Christine Layumas / Leave a comment

July 1, 2016

We started our day as usual, with Breakfast at Tita Mona’s! 😉 It was shopping day so we had to bangil! lol Tita Mona’s menu for breakfast today was: Pork Adobo, Friend Eggs, Fresh tomatoes, Giniling, and Chocolate Croissant!

We walked to Rue de Passy from Tita Mona’s place and we found a store that sells really cheap Longchamp bags. Our friends bought a bunch. It was dead cheap. While our friends were shopping, Vim & I were photoshooting. lol We were saving ourselves for another visit to a Primark store. 😉

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Paris: Day 2

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June 30, 2016

It’s day two at the city of love! We were up early and had breakfast at Tita Mona’s once again. She prepared corned beef, potato omelette, spam, and croissant for breakfast. We were so full! 🙂

We had to walk to Trocadero from Tita Mona’s place, which was I around 20 minutes away, to catch the Hop On Hop Off Bus. We opted to do this so that we could go around Paris and see the all the tourist spots in one day. From what I can remember, we paid around 30-40 Euros for 1-day bus tour + River cruise.
The whole cr3w! 😉
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