I was gone for a while in Thailand, training Muay Thai and just exploring the city of Bangkok, which seems to constantly change and get trendier as time passes. I didn’t get on the internet much, so I haven’t been posting anything new in a while, but I eventually made the choice to go to Shanghai for a few days to change the scenery a bit.

After seeing China, I feel like it’s an awesome country, and its infrastructure is pretty developed, and a leading model for all these countries in Southeast Asia. It was eye-opening to me how all of these hotel and serviced-apartment brands—like Oakwood, Somerset, and Holiday Inn—are all over China, and I think they are based there, though I need to look that up further.

Also, all the major condo developments in Bangkok and Jakarta seem to be modeled after the way China approaches its modern condos. In a way, Southeast Asia is seeing China as its model, and if you're out here in any of these cities, like Bangkok for example, it's good for you to see China at least once, to have a better idea of why things are the way they are.

Anyway, here's what I did. Since I'm American, getting a visa involves a process that I didn't want to go through, so I simply used the current 240-hour transit visa that's being given out for free to citizens of several nations, including the U.S. When you get to any of the airports in China, there's going to be a line in immigration for this specific purpose, and it will say "240-hour Transit Visa" at the top. You need to use that one.

You also need to make sure your ticket originates in one country and ends in another. So you can't do Thailand → China → Thailand. You'll need to do something like Malaysia → China → Thailand, or USA → Thailand → China → USA, and so on. I hope you get the point. Macau and Hong Kong are valid, and you can use those countries as an endpoint if needed.

Once at immigration in China, everything went well and smoothly, and the immigration officers were very nice to me at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. They even had time to make jokes, and I felt very welcome in general. As an American, I didn't need to have any hotels booked or show anything beyond giving immigration an address of where I was going to stay that day.

In general, the whole immigration experience went smoothly, and I will go to China again in a few days because I fell in love with certain aspects of that country.