Either carry your passport with you all time indeed (I personally put it in a plastic bag to avoid any issue with Water/rain etc. Your passport is usually the only official document recognized in most of the foreign countries. Driving licence, IC and the like are not recognized as official there so passport is your life line, love it, dun loose it, dun damage it, dun get it stolen.

I do recommend to leave a full copy of your passport at the hotel just in case you end up loosing it anyway. There are little worst thing that could happen to you than loosing your passport while in a foreign countries. A copy would at least give you something to identify yourself at your Embassy and give you a chance

Leaving a copy in Msia has little interest in my opinion since if you manage to come back here without... you can always make a new one. It's when you are overseas you need a passport

I have been to Shenzhen recently using Shenzhen airlines and it was overall a nice trip, I do not see anything wrong that should happen to you. Make sure you have your passport, wallet and plane tickets and that you have applied for a Chinese visa of course. Other than that it's a "normal" trip and place, I have even found chinese police and customs to be quite helpful.

My gf (who is a China Chinese) went to do mine. I never had to do anything or move my butt for mine.

So I would say yes according to my experience

From my understanding she should go to the Malaysia Embassy or nearest Consulate (not sure what you call "Mission"?), it does not matter at all if she is canadian or not, they are the only ones that can help with tha and it's their goddam jobt. They might just be lazy to do it...

And about the "can I apply the visa without her presence", in almost all the case that I know they need to see the person in real at least once. You could try to negotiate hard but it really depends of the person you going to have behind the desk, I would not bet much on your chances

Ha, then it's different.

In some countries the embassies have some agreement with some agencies and you HAVE to go through them.

From what I know the main reasons they use these agencies can be:

- Law requirement, like US, you MUST go through some kind of agent

- Some local agreement with the agency. Like I know lots of European countries in China use this system so they have Chinese people to do the processing, which are paid way less than if they had the embassy employees do it.

In your case I would go the Malaysian Embassy in Canada's website (if they have one) and check what is the real process and requirements, usually they give you the processes there. Sometimes I trust more the website than the people behind the counter as the people can just be too lazy to do it or give you full answers

In some case you also can do lots of the processing online which helps to make it faster (like you can download the documents, fill them up for your friend if she isnt sure what to put, then sent it back to her for printing)

If the website tells you that you can do it directly, then legally the Embassy shouldnt be able to refuse.
If the website says you have to go through some agency, then you got not choice yar.

But the best solution would definitely be for your friend to get her visa there, it's the job of Msian embassy to do that.
Trying to get it yourself in Msia with her documents has way less chance of success I think.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Mar 1 2010, 04:16 PM

Hum yar, I think you got quite low chance to have some issues but it's not 0%, Germany is not SG where they are used to see Msian coming back and forth.

With the Xmas events with US the security has been increased in Europe, even for non-US flights.

I would say it really depends on the guy you will have at the border (most don't really check much in my experience), but if you can get a new passport before your flight I would say it's safer

I had that case before with a visa and a expiring passport.

What they did is that they give me a new passport but stapled the old one to it so I could still show my visa.
Ie: they did not "transfer" the visa to the new passport but I had 2 passports, the new one that was the one I had to use for any new visa and the old one that was only valid just for that visa until it expired.

I am not sure about Australia but I believe it might be the same.

As yeahh said I would still check with some of the organizations there or your uni directly.

Correct, they will usually staple the old one with the new one, you will keep the old one until the last visa on it is valid.

Once expired you are "supposed" to bring it back to the Embassy/Guv office for destruction but almost all people keep it as souvenir (I did too)

Yes and no.

You only have to show the ones that still have valid visas, the old ones with nothing more valid on them you don't have to carry them around, staple only, easily can remove.

Don't think there are any place where visas last 10 years

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Apr 22 2010, 10:57 AM

Guangzhou and Shenzhen are in mainland so you only need to apply for one mainland visa for both.

HK is separate from China (for visas at least) and Malaysian do not have to apply (if I am not wrong) before going there.

Just be careful between single or multiple entries to mainland if you have to go back and forth between mainland and HK.

Yep, as a side-note, going to Macau or HK is considered "leaving the country" so for example if you want to go China (like Shenzhen) then visit HK/Macao then continue in China, you NEED multiple entries visa.

You posted 2 times the 2nd page, can see the first page or not?

From what I know (I am French), quite a few times without issues
But you can't work or anything with this kind of visa

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Jul 27 2010, 11:00 AM

Yep, I know people who stayed few years too, just need to go in and out of Malaysia every 90 days (which is a bit of a pain but well, not too bad).

Not illegal but some just want to stay in Malaysia for a while without having a real position in a company to get a working visa.
Most of the people I knew who did that were actually ones who finished their studies in Malaysia and just decided to hang around for a couple of years.

For foreigners life can be cheap enough in Malaysia to be able to do so without having any real job, their parents quite rich, get some grant from back home guv etc.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Jul 27 2010, 01:08 PM

Yep, that's what I meant (and also what rjb123 meant too I think) to reply to static's question, just to go around the 90 days limit by going out and then back into Malaysia.

Usually Thailand or SG are easiest and cheapest, go there, look around a bit then come back, another 90 days to go.

Don't think there is really a limit being enforced but it might also depend of which nationality you have, for westerners it's quite easy.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Jul 27 2010, 03:30 PM

After checking Thailand gave me 30 days on my visas for normal tourism each time I went (again I got a French passport so it should be the same for a Dutch)

And yes the MM2H conditions are quite strict so I can totally understand lots of people do not want or cannot meet the requirements.