China Travel Forum

[Alice]

Hi all,

Two women travelling to China for the first time next May for almost 4 weeks. One of us has been learning Chinese, so will have some very basic language skills. We got together last night and did out a very rough itinerary. While we are gone beyond backpacking we will be using backpacks, so will be quite mobile, but we would like to stay in budget hotels rather than hostels. Here is our itinerary: -

Beijing - 3 days.
Leave Beijing very early morning to go to Datong - spend day there and then get overnight train to Hohot.
2 full days in Hohot with trip to Grasslands and stay overnight in a yurt. On 3rd day fly to Chengdu.
Day in Chengdu to see Pandas.
Leave 6am following morning for Lhasa.
Spend maybe 5-6 days in Tibet. Leave Tibet for trip to Kumming via Changdu. Spend 2 days in Kumming or surrounding area and then fly to Yangshao via Guilin.
Spend 3 days in Yangshao and then fly to Shanghai via Guilin.
Spend 3 days in Shanghai before heading to Xian for 2 days and then back to Beijing for final 2/3 days.

What do you think? Are we missing anything really important? Have we too long in one place and not enough time in another?

And now here are some questions that we have.

Anyone done the trip to the Mongolian grasslands from Beijing? Would we be better off leaving out the Datong/Hohot part of our trip and just do the trip from Beijing? But we have a horror of being brought to lots of shops along the way!

If we get the train to Datong, can we leave our bags safely at the train station? I really don't fancy lugging my bag around for the day!

How can we check train times/flights and costs between cities? Or do we really have to wait until we get there?

Are we spending too long in Lhasa? I presume that we will do some kind of tour when we get there.

Many thanks for any help you can give me.

[Bernard]

A few suggestions:
1) Take the soft sleeper, fast trains. This will save you having to pay for a hotel room and will get you to a new destination by morning. e.g., there's a overnight train from Beijing to Datong, which gets you into Datong at 8am in the morning. The all day CITS tour of the Yungang Caves and the Hanging Monastery leaves the train station area around 9am, so you could store your luggage with CITS (no charge!). At the end of the tour, you are taken back to the train station where you can retrieve your luggage and take another overnight train to another destination. I generally don't recommend the CITS offices, but the one in Datong is very helpful for tourists.
2) Do not use backpacks, except for one schoolbag sized one and one smaller daypack. You will not be happy having to backpack everything through train stations and airports. Suggest that when you get to Beijing, you get a wheeled 21" piece of luggage with COMBINATION LOCKS installed on the bag. You will need the locks if you plan on leaving your luggage at the left luggage places. The wheels on the luggage will be a life saver. These bags are cheap in China, shouldn't cost you more than $5-$10 for one bag. Be sure to get one with good wheels, roll the bag around before purchase (speaking from experience!)
ON hygiene: take a few small bottles of Purell. In restaurants, etc. we would usually squirt a few drops and get clean hands!
Do not eat anything that has not been cooked and cooked through (this leaves out salads or steak tartare or gourmet raw lobster - a Chinese favorite - out of your dining experience in China). You will find there are lots of delicious and ridiculously cheap food in China that is very safe to eat. Just make sure everything is cooked.
Drink only bottled water. In fact, USE only bottled water in your mouth - this means brushing your teeth with bottled water and not opening your mouth in the shower. A lot of times, the hotels will have a thermos of hot water for you; this is usually safe to use (the Chinese don't want to get sick either and they ALWAYS boil their drinking water). Make sure you clean the drinking cup, tho. If you rinse out the cup with sink water, make sure your rinse out the cup with drinking/boiled water - well, you get the idea. Take precautions on what you put into your mouth.
Always have some Imodium on hand. Flatten a roll of toilet tissue to pack in your luggage. I also find that a small box of moist baby wipes comes in handy. I also pack a small bottle of Listerine to use as a disinfectant for cleaning cuts and wounds (not any mouthwash will do). Lastly, I have a few individually wrapped alcohol wipes.
Let's say we go on a tour somewhere, I toss a couple of the alcohol wipes in my daypack. If my finger gets cut, I can always clean it with the wipe and use a bandaid for protection. You don't have to carry the entire bottle of Listerine with you on a day tour!
Left luggage places - there are plenty of these in China, particularly at the RR stations. Some of the larger cities have multiple locations.
a) Make sure you know what the per day charge is. The best ones are posted - if posted, make the clerk point to the exact charge.
b) If the per day charge is not written out on your receipt, make the clerk write it on the receipt for you. Better, have him sign his name on the receipt. I've never had a problem with a left luggage place, but there were a couple of places where the honesty of the clerk wasn't exactly clear!
c) If there are multiple locations, make sure you remember at which location you left your luggage. You'll be surprised how in a large and strange RR station you can really get disoriented.
d) Oh yeah, ALWAYS lock your luggage with the combination lock. 95% of the left luggage places are safe; but you need only one bad clerk to ruin your trip for you!
e) How much? You shouldn't have to pay more than $1 US a day per bag, usually it's a lot less. This comes out to be about 1/2 EURO a day.
Hotels - In different cities in China, I've run into tourists on a budget and some of them said they used
asiahotels.com
to get them inexpensive hotels and the ones who talked about that website all appeared happy with what they got.
There are also some youth hostels in China. I have no idea how good or bad these are.
On the other hand, I once ran into a couple of young Europeans who thought that $17 US a night was too much. They were looking for real Chinese hotels where they could pay $1 US a night! I didn't know these places existed - LOL!
Otherwise, in the interior of China, lodgings can be relatively inexpensive. E.G., in Datong, the "best" place is the Datong Bingun which would run you about $60 US for a room for two. It's about as luxurious as you can get in Datong. If business is not good, they may have a posted amount that's 40% less than that! Always look at the posted amounts and ask if you can get a discount.
Sorry for breaking this into little chunks, but I didn't want to type up a whole bunch of stuff and have it disappear into cyberspace again!
Lastly (aren't you glad?) on your itinerary:
There is so much to see and you are dashing all over China. I'd suggest the following:
Plan on what you would like to see in each big city area: Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Then tally how many days you have left and allot those to the out of the way locations in an order of your own priority. This would be better than any of us trying to suggest to you what to see or not to see.
With a month, I'd personally also slot two or three "catchup" days. These are days, like every tenth day, for catching up. Something is going to go wrong - there are no morning trains; you get stomach flu; your bag is too small for all the souvenirs you have purchased and you need to find a bigger bag - you need to give yourself some breathing room every once in a while to regroup and restart.

Have fun! and Have a great trip!