As many travelers are aware, one of the first "checklist" tasks to take care of when visiting a foreign country is to ensure your visa status is all sorted out. Forgetting to do so would be akin to forgetting your keys: you don't have your car key so you can't go where you need to go [rejection of entry into foreign country] and you don't have your house key so you can't go home [arrest in foreign country].
Heeding this well-traveled advice (lame pun intended), I looked at the US State Department's website to find out what, if anything, must be done prior to my travels.
Luckily for me, Hong Kong has a very liberal tourism policy. If you are from the USA and you are staying in Hong Kong for less than 90 days, which I am, no visa is required.
I had to admit, I was a little disappointed. I wanted to get a visa of some sort! Usually I loathe bureaucratic red-tape, loopholes and [pointless] forms that must be filled out in order to get a government to act (i.e. the Treasury Department form: Authorization Agreement for Preauthorized Payments. Apparently you have to agree to authorize preauthorized payments -- ha! Think about that one for a second).
Having just completely destroyed your train of thought, allow me to elaborate why I was disappointed and wanted a visa stamp. A visa stamp on your passport is in many instances a badge of honor. It is the middle ground between the permanent nature of a tattoo on your body and the fleeting nature of a gold star sticker from a kindergarten teacher (which, in the past, I would re-use by sticking them onto my parents' clothing). If I am going to spend nearly 3 months in a foreign country, I wanted either a visa stamp, a tattoo or a gold star sticker! The latter two were not feasible because it would unleash a hell-storm of parental fury and because Mrs. Vandervert, my elementary school teacher, is not a tattoo artist...
This brings us to the point of this post. Having assuaged myself about any potential visa issues in Hong Kong, I next looked to mainland China. Hong Kong is literally a few hours, if not minutes, away from the mainland. (HK is a special administrative region [SAR] so they have different border policies, despite being a part of the country of China). Naturally it made sense to see how I could procure a visa, if one was needed, in order to visit the mainland.
The gargantuan leap in restrictions was mind boggling. The details of which would be preserved for a future post, where I can adequately set aside time to mock, rant and poke fun at the policy in place.
I decided to do a little comparative analysis of the restrictions in place for China and other regions in the area. Since North Korea has long-held the perception of being one of the, if not the most, inclusive regime in the world, it made for a fitting comparison. The liberal border policies of Hong Kong and the extreme nature of North Korea, allows for a comprehensive spectrum to be developed. Where exactly would China fall within this spectrum?
I am going to preface this short analysis with what I consider to be an entertaining, yet thought-provoking video that was featured in magazines like TIME. (TIME Magazine article link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/17/watch-how-one-man-caught-secret-video-inside-north-korea-and-lived/)
Steve Gong is a photojournalist that had risked his personal safety to create, in my humble opinion, a revelatory and startling media piece about North Korea. It was clearly done through the visionary lens of an artist, but you could not help but be constantly reminded of the real and subtle danger that lurked around every single frame shot. Check it out!
- that use to be my old haircut!
Notable quotes from the US State Department's travel advisory for North Korea:
- [You] may be arrested, detained, or expelled for ... interaction with the local population.
- Are we suppose to interact with the foreign population that is almost non-existent in the country? Ahh, perhaps North Korea promotes an introspective line of thinking by asking you to talk with yourself?
- Security personnel may also view any unauthorized attempt you make to talk to a North Korean citizen as espionage.
- Check. Theory confirmed.
Maybe China's policy isn't so bad afterall... maybe. You can decide when that topic is brought up in a later post.
