I am a penny pincher. If I were a millionaire, I’d likely allow myself to get a 2-bedroom apartment if convinced to ‘live a little’. So, it’s no wonder that I discovered a really cheap – and awesome – place that I can do a visa run outside of China.

You see, until I finish struggling with new regulations to get my work visa in Shanghai I’m trapped on a tourist visa, meaning I need to leave the country every 90 days. You can go to anywhere, but most people tend to choose Hong Kong because it’s nearby, easy, cheap and still counts as ‘leaving’ China.

Except it’s NOT cheap. Sure, the flights were the cheapest from the others neighbouring countries I checked, but when you have to pay $250 a night for a window-less slum in Chungking Mansions with your hotel concierge sleeping by your feet, it adds up. Thailand was second cheapest and also comes with the benefits of cheap hotels.

But then I stumbled across a very special secret: Kinmen (or Jinmen) Island. I will write more about my experience there and any knowledge about the place in a follow up post, but this post is simply updated travel advice for those going through the same thing as me out there.

Kinmen Island is a tiny island of Taiwan right off the coast of Mainland China. In fact, it’s so close that the two countries had cannons set up to fire at each other across the water (see future post). This means you could, if in a rush, do the whole visa run process in the course of a single day if you catch an early flight.

The best thing about this trip is that it was potentially half the price of any alternative. Great! But was it too good to be true?

Most information I had found regarding visa runs to this island – and indeed any other important information about Chinese regulations - tend to come from 2013, or are on websites that were last updated pre-9/11. Coincidence?

The main article I discovered this island on had the most recent insights, with a single comment graciously updating the situation as of 5 months ago (January 2018) saying it was indeed a thing that could be done, as they had just done it. This was good enough for me, but it's pretty out of date otherwise so I felt it important to do an updated version. I'll drop a comment there, too.

There were a dozen factors that added risk and fear in my mind. For those who don’t know, Taiwan is an independent nation according to Taiwan and like two other countries in the world, the rest have bowed down to the lucrative big bully of mainland China and written in their constitutions that Taiwan is just another district of China – Even though Taiwan has its own currency, government, military, democracy and so on. They’re just being pesky rogues.

For me, this means there’s more risk than Hong Kong: perhaps they changed the rules at any given time for political reasons, perhaps you need to stay on the island for a minimum period of some days, or any number of nuanced issues.

But hell, time for adventure.

The route seemed simple enough. You can either catch a train to Xiamen which takes 8 or 6 hours for 300-500 Yuan ($75) each way, or you can get a flight, with varying prices. For me, only 24 hours in advance, they were about $102 each way from Shanghai – half the price of the next cheapest flights to Hong Kong. If you go in advance, you can expect around $110 for the whole return. The flights are about 1:50, or the same distance from London to Berlin. This more than makes up for the slightly cheaper and way less efficient train.

I had always wanted to go to Xiamen, a southern Island city said to be some kind of paradise or whatever. To top things off, the hotels were cheap. I want to express caution here though; most the cheap hotels were ‘Chinese only’ – they need an extra license to hold foreigners.

I went with a 4-star hotel because they had a half price deal going on – Penny pincher. I really recommend JinMing Central Hotel since it's a little out of mainstream locations but very, very nice, reasonably priced even without the discount and fairly central in the island so it's cheap and easy to get to any given spot.

So anyway, off I flew with no delays for once, and spent the day mooching about before heading to the Kinmen Island the following day. I’ll write more about what secrets I found there in the next post, but in short, it was straightforward, quick, easy and cheap.

Next, you simply get a taxi to ‘wutong matou’ – the only ferry terminal that goes to the island. The taxi’s start at 10rmb so no trip from any given corner of the island is going to be too painful. I got stuck in traffic in one trip for a long, long time and had to cough up 70rmb. That’s $10.

The Xiamen dialect seems more or less sane, too, so ‘wutong matou’ should really be easy instructions for them.

Upon arrival, cough up another 160RMB for the trip, which departs every 30 minutes or so, but exchange the equivalent into Taiwan dollars for the return trip while you wait – you can also do this on the other side without the need to go through the laborious authoritarian passport routine you’d do on the China side.

The trip takes about 30 minutes. And the last ferry back is around 6pm. The immigration process is pretty much the same as an airport, maybe a bit laxer given the smaller crowds. That’s it, you’ve made it to Taiwan!

At this point you can either turn straight around (turn left at the exit and go around the building that way to the entrance), or go check out the sights, take a breath of peaceful, fresh air, have some terrible lunch at the food court across the road, rent a bike up the road with your credit card, or any number of things. I went with secretive exploration which again I’ll write about in a follow up article.

You can stay overnight, but without phone service this can be annoying from previous experiences. My Huawei phone did graciously offer me 4 hours and 20mb of free trial service while I was there which was more than enough to explore the area for a bit, but I really wanted to go explore more of Xiamen before the lights went out.

On the third day, after a thoroughly relaxing 4-star hotel night and a thoroughly exhausting 50,000 steps of exploration, I headed back to Shanghai. Again, the taxi was an easy and cheap catch, but if you can use the Didi service this is also available if necessary. Just say ‘Gaoqi T-si’, or ‘Gaochee T-suh’. Gaoqi is airport – there’s only one - and everybody goes to Terminal 4 (si).

So, it’s official, as of August 2018, this tiny island exists, you can do a visa run, and you can save a LOT of money by doing so. On top of this, Xiamen and Kinmen are wonderful adventure locations, which I’m sure people in Asia can appreciate after their 12th time in Hong Kong.

Instructional Summary

0.5) Make sure you have any necessary visa to Taiwan - This is not needed for British citizens such as myself, nor US citizens.

1) Catch a flight from Shanghai to Xiamen – Expect prices to be barely over $100 return if you book in advance. It’ll take under 2 hours.

2) Get a taxi to ‘Wutong Matou’ quite close to the airport in the north-east of the island – I doubt it’ll cost any more than $10, and likely substantially less. All taxis are metered.

3) Go into the terminal and queue up, ask for Jinmen or Kinmen if you want but I’m pretty sure that’s the only choice based on the board schedule. Pay $25

4) Do the same in reverse!

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For a nice trip, you can expect to pay a total of about $500 from your apartment to Jinmen and back over 3 days or so, but you can certainly go cheaper. A true budget trip over a single day will cost little more than $150.

Whoever finds this, have fun! Definitely worth the mini adventure. Check out my next post for a more regular blog about my experience.

As for my regular followers, you just wasted 5 minutes of reading time. Suckers.