Hi, Here's my trip diary... sorry it's taken so long but I've been quite busy! Just to give back after getting good advice here on the boards!

I booked our trip through Elaine @ China Highlights. I was pleased with everything, from guides to accommodations. Nothing fell thru, all went as planned. With 8 people, I decided to have a guide at some sights, unguided at other times. That worked out really well; it was exhausting just getting around and sightseeing that some “down time” was really welcome, and it was also good for us to split up and venture off into smaller groups or individually to do whatever we wanted.

Don't change money at the airport (unless you really need to). They take a big commission (30 Yuan). Use the ATM or change at the hotels. It's very easy to do at the hotels (commissions varied from none to 10 Yuan). Travelers checks get a better rate than cash.

No Chinese tea in any of our hotels breakfasts, just Lipton! Bring your own if you drink Chinese tea… The homemade yogurts at breakfasts are yummy! As are French fries anywhere… and if KFC is your fave fast food joint, China is the place for you! They are everywhere, even bigger than McDonald’s. And Starbucks is turning up every where as well.

Cheap internet service in all business centers of the hotels.

Pedestrians have no rights when crossing streets in China. Cross in packs. Even better if you cross with an elderly Chinese person ;-) Cabs are cheap and scary. Road rules don’t apply anywhere and the sound of screeching brakes & tooting horns lend to noise pollution.

Bring toilet paper & wipes/sanitizer with you at all times. Most of the public toilets are porcelain squatties and weren't as bad as I had thought, but be prepared anyway.

Lots of non-English speaking people, even in tourist areas. But they all understand money! Bargain hard, start at 10% of asking price, esp. in Yangshuo, where the Li River cruises let out. They really inflate the prices there! Bargaining became a sport for me. Never let them know you want stuff badly and walk away. Vendors will call you back most times. It's silly to haggle over what would come out to be less than US $1 but like I said, it's a sport! In general, the government stores are safe places to buy higher quality things, like pearls & silk, so we did some shopping there for those things. Assume everything in street markets are fake. (i.e. coins, antiques, jade, pearls, silk)

Carry a hotel business card for you at all times & have the folks there write where you want to go in Chinese. Also we never had a problem with hotels ripping us off with cabs rides; our cabs always used the meters.

Hotel rooms tend to be really dry. I would rec bringing saline spray for your nose, as I caught a cold.

Next: Beijing

Beijing:

Wish we had at least another day or 2 in Beijing... so much to see, so little time!

Major Beijing streets are very clean, as are most of the cities. Lots of construction and renovation as everyone is getting ready for the Olympics.

Guangzhou Hotel (Xidan Shopping District) – nice, newer hotel. Excellent buffet breakfast. Nice rooms, slippers & robes. Good location, walking distance to Tiananmen Square & Forbidden Palace (about 15-20 minutes).

Day 1: We took 2 cabs to the Summer Palace, 26 Yuan per cab. One of our cabbies didn’t want to take us all the way there, so both cabs dumped us at an area where we took a boat to one of the entrances. (Y65 including entrance fee) Who knew you can get there by water? None of the books mentioned it. On the way back, we got a minibus outside the gate and bargained to 60 Yuan (since we knew how much the cabs were coming in).

Walked thru Tienanmen Square. It’s huge. Then to Forbidden City. You can buy a guide book for Y20 or get a audio guide to help you get through it.

Dinner at Green T House in Sanlitun area, rec by some business friends. The presentation was amazing, the food quality was just OK. Was expensive even for Western standards (US $65 per person).

Day 2: Hike from Jinshanling to Simitai. We had a guide for our portion of the Great Wall, about 3 hours from Beijing. It's an amazing, beautiful stretch of the wall, a pretty rugged trail, about 6.5 miles long. We had a great farmer’s lunch at the parent’s home of our guide Alan. The house was only 5 minutes away from the trailhead. We also met his wife, who is pregnant with their 1st child.

There are hardly any people on the trail, only villagers who will follow you most of the trail wanting to sell you stuff. As annoying as they were, they were equally helpful on the trail, esp when the trail started getting dicey. So I guess you would call them our personal guides. Their English was also amazingly good too. There was also what we called the “mountain goat” trail that runs alongside the wall, which one of our trekkers took when she realized that the ups & downs was going to be too much, tho she did say it was no less scary (big drop offs). She was led by a couple of the villagers and met us near the end of the trail.

About 5 miles in, I noticed some construction in the distance, so I asked Alan what was going on. Apparently, they are making a road that will go from Beijing to that section of the wall, making it only an hour & a half drive from Beijing. The road will be finished well before the Olympics. Another big change at the end of the trail at Simitai, is a big shopping strip. I think that section will be as commercialized as other sections before long.

We were so exhausted from the hike that we skipped dinner! We had wanted Peking duck. Oh well.

Day 3: Cooking class demonstration at a vocational school in Beijing. What I learned: 1) The Chinese are still sexist; only boys can become chefs, and only girls who have flawless skin, can be beauticians; 2) sweet & sour chicken is much less sweet (& preferable IMO) in China than in the US and 3) food presentation is a total art, which I can never master ;-). It was really very interesting.

Alan then took us to a government pearl market, which we didn’t mind going to. Most of us wanted to buy pearls but didn’t want the hassle of dealing with fakes. I don’t think anyone got any real super deals but the store had some really nice styles compared to what we saw later.

We then had lunch at a old, local restaurant known for their jia jiang mien. It was really a simple dish, very different than the one we get here at home. It was really good, really fresh ingredients. And so cheap: lunch for the 9 of us, including wine, beer, sodas, teas, cost Y135 (or about US$ 17).

After lunch, we went to the silk market, near the Olympic Stadium. Again, very interesting displays, but was saving my silk purchasing for Suzhou. Off to the airport for our flight to Xi’an. The flight itself on Hainan Airlines was OK… note that leg room on these Chinese airlines are better than on US airlines.

Next: Xi'an

Xi’an: Arrived in Xi’an late (was hoping we’d have an earlier flight). We are met by our new guide Cindy, a petite dynamo with quite a forceful personality & knowledge.

We stayed at the Bell Tower Hotel in the center of town, an excellent location within the old city walls. The rooms were comfy, although some rooms had mold problems in the bathrooms. Again, an excellent buffet breakfast.

Day 4: Went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. What can I say, it’s an amazing find. We kinda blew through the other pits so we could get back to the city and roam around on our own.

After Cindy & our driver dropped us off at the hotel, we walked to the Muslim Quarters, a really interesting neighborhood. We stopped at a small noodle place for lunch. That was an adventure just trying to figure out what kind of dishes they had. The English menu was no help, as descriptions are often far off than what it really is. But all in all, a tasty noodle soup lunch… and the cheapest we had the whole trip - 10 bowls of soup, beers, tea & soda all for less than US $6!

We split up and then explored the big market here. Lots of good local folk art can be found here. I bought some great tea, with the help of my trusty printout of Chinese teas written in Chinese.

My friend & I then headed off to tour the old city wall by bike. It was really fun to ride a one speed again, like when we were kids. There are bike rentals right on top of the walls, as well as guided tram rides. It cost Y40 to get up on the wall and another Y16 to rent a bike. It took us about 1.5 hours to ride the 10 mile loop and sightsee. It was a very interesting perspective on life in Xi’an.

I am sorry we were here only 1 full day, although the air quality isn’t great and that we saw the most street beggars here in Xi’an than anywhere else we went. There were so many other sights I had wanted to see.

Next: Guilin

Day 5: Woke early for our flight to Guilin. We flew China Eastern. The airlines had oversold the coach seats so 2 of us got bumped up to 1st class. Sweet!

Guilin: very tropical weather, hot & humid, but oh, very lovely surrounding areas. We stayed at the Guilin Park Hotel, on the northwest end of town. It was a little off the beaten path, but still a pleasant walk to the night market on the main drag. The hotel also sits on the very pretty Gui Lake, where I took a great morning walk (still fighting a little jet lag) with many locals already starting their day.

Our guide here was our favorite, Mr. Qi (pron. Chee). He reminded me of a nice uncle, very pleasant, professional and well seasoned. He took us to our hotel, where we also grabbed a quick lunch (delicious! And very reasonable, considering it was at a hotel.)

After lunch, we headed to Reed Flute Cave. It was really cool. Full of awesome & very interesting rock formations. The lighting is dramatic and sometimes cheesy, but it was worth seeing. Then we went to Elephant Trunk Hill. The views on top are really pretty.

Last but not least, Mr. Qi took us to get pressure point massages! What a treat. He took us to the Ronghu, where you can have a full body or foot massage. A foot massage is almost like getting a full body, except you are seated with your clothes on, they start with your feet then work their way up to a shoulder, back & head massage. If you want all the kinks in your muscles (as I had from the hike & bike ride!) worked out, ask for a boy. OMG, I almost screamed in pain a few times. The next day, I had a girl give me a massage and it was so much more relaxing.

We took a walk along the lively night market and had a snack dinner there. It was like a flea market, where locals can buy just about anything, dishes, underwear, tea, etc.It was like a flea market, where locals can buy just about anything, dishes, underwear, tea, etc.

Day 6: Today we are off to Longji, the terraced rice fields of Longsheng. It was a 2.5 hour drive from Guilin and definitely a highlight of our trip. The views are amazing, as these 700+ year old rice fields are cut into the mountains, creating ribbons that travel up and down the mountainside, the Dragon’s backbone. Life here is hard work but people live simply. Along the way the Yao women with the long hair harass you to buy things but also you can give them a gratuity to see them undo their hair & to put it back up. Our best meal in China was here along the walking trail at the Pingan Guest House. It was a feast and, again, the food is so good & fresh. (Note: If you go after mid October, the fields will be harvested and scenery not as pretty.)

After Mr Qi dropped us off after our massages, we headed to town for dinner at a good restaurant Mr Qi had recommended, at Zhengyang Souper Restaurant off the main street. Yum. Tried Great Wall wine. It was awful.

Took a walk to the night market again.

Day 7: Cruise along the Li River. Beautiful & dramatic scenery, but almost anticlimactic for me as the day before was so different and special. There’s a long fleet of tour boats that go on the river daily. This turned out to be one of the sunniest days we’ve had and it sure was getting hot up on the deck. A bunch of us ended up playing cards in the A/C’d cabin downstairs and befriended 2 Indian families from Kentucky and Dehli. We had a blast learning how to play poker and using my wafer snacks as chips. Food on the boat was not so good.

The boat docked in Yangshuo. If you didn’t venture off the shopping areas you would’ve thought that shopping was all that was to Yangshuo. I can see how people like to hang out here. It’s a very cute town with lots of coffee shops, and probably very quiet when the people from the tour boats leave. Bargain extremely hard for everything here! I bargained for some fake old Chinese coins from Y1500 to Y75!

Stayed in at the hotel for drinks and lite dinner. Finally met Elaine who met us there. It was nice to finally put a face to the e-mails.

Next: Suzhou

Day 8: Guilin to Suzhou via Shanghai. This morning Mr Qi took us to the airport to get on our flight on Air China to Shanghai. We checked in as a group so no one would have problems with luggage weight restrictions.

After an uneventful flight (yay we survived all our domestic flights!), we were met by new guide Tony, who took us on a 2 hour ride to Suzhou. We checked into our hotel, the Bamboo Grove hotel. Nice, clean, pretty robes in the room.

The rest of the afternoon, we split up and roamed around the city. Found more tea to buy. Somehow I had it in my head that Suzhou was a pretty city with all those classical gardens, but I thought it wasn’t so. Suzhou was pretty gray. As I found out the next day, the prettiest areas are inside the walls of those gardens and along the canal.

Day 9: Today we go gardening! We 1st went to the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the largest of the classical gardens in Suzhou. It was beautiful. There were nice displays of birds in bamboo cages and a big bonsai display.

Tony suggested we go on a boat ride along the canal, something that wasn’t on our itinerary. We were game, so we all paid Y60 for a nice boat to take us down the river. If we had not taken this ride, we would have never gotten a feel for some of the traditional ways of living along the canal. People still wash their clothes in the water, unsanitary, but I guess what is one gonna do?

After our boat ride, we were taken to the silk factory. Seeing as tho we already got the lecture at the factory in Beijing, we skipped all the demonstrations and went straight to the store. I was a little disappointed in bedding designs (& designs of everything) in general, thought the duvet covers & pillow shams in Beijing were nicer in design. I did buy a silk quilt here.

For lunch Tony wanted to take us to the factory restaurant, where everyone else was eating, but we refused. We insisted he take us to a good, local restaurant. So he took us to a place called the Tongji Restaurant, which turned out to be excellent.

After lunch, we went to the Master of the Nets Garden. It is the smallest of all the gardens, but well designed and peaceful. We also managed to cram in a visit to Hanshan Temple, Suzhou’s largest Buddhist Temple.

Before dropping us off at the hotel, Tony wanted us to visit the Silk Embroidery Research Center. Aha. Research Center, museums, those terms really meant gift shops, we’ve learned. So we stopped in for 15 minutes and really, Suzhou embroidery is amazing & intricate. The double-sided embroidery with 2 different designs is mind-boggling. It’s worthwhile just to see that.

Dinner at the hotel. We seemed to do this a lot. It was exhausting after seeing so much during the day that we just couldn’t get out again to look for dinner. Got foot massages after dinner.


Day 10: Suzhou to Tongli to Shanghai. We headed out early for our ride to Tongli. It is an absolutely charming water town. Once you get inside the old town, there are no motorized vehicles on the street, just bikes and pedestrian traffic. Nothing really seems to be rebuilt here, so you can get a feel for the old ways of living, people still doing their laundry & washing vegetables in the canal. Stopped and had tea at a cute tea shop. Good local art here in Tongli, as well as inexpensive embroidered wall art. Bought some delicious sesame crackers from a street vendor, to Tony’s dismay (“Tony doesn’t know if it’s clean!” – funny how they learn English and refer to themselves in the third person). Poor Tony had to chase 8 girls around today and make sure they weren’t getting in trouble. HA. But we realized that he didn’t want any of us getting sick on his watch, so…

Next: To Shnaghai

Off to Shanghai, about 1.5 hours from Tongli. Yikes what a culture clash. We went from a nice and quiet village to a bustling, non-stop neon-lit metropolis. We were dropped off at our new hotel, the Pacific Luck. The rooms were very nice, modernly furnished. Good location, about a 15 minute walk to the Bund.

After settling in a bit, we went out in search for food. Walked round & round looking for a restaurant in my guidebook, but it was nowhere to be found. We ended up at a sort of fast-food, cafeteria-type place, which was kinda fun. We just pointed to what we wanted and they cooked hot stuff to order.

We then split up. Some went shopping on Nanjing Rd. and the rest of us just sat and took in the action on the Bund. It was nice just sitting down and doing nothing.

On the way back I stopped and got more tea (!) and had dinner at the hotel. The food here at the hotel wasn’t as good as all the other hotels. And what the heck is a “shaslick of chicken”?

Day 11: Took a cab to the French Concession area. Our first order of business was to make reservations at Dragonfly for massages. Had heard good things about this place so we wanted to check it out.

Walked around the area and made our way to the Shanghai Arts & Crafts Museum. Not what I expected and yup, yet another big gift shop. But they were air conditioned, which was badly needed and clean bathrooms. It was hot, about 95 degrees.

Near the museum was a music store, where a couple of my friends bought Er-Hus, the 2 stringed Chinese instrument. Our walk took us to the big market on Huahai. It was a shopping bonanza, full of fake designer goods and cheap souvenirs.

Exhausted from bargaining, we ate lunch at a restaurant nearby, the Pengyun. We had delicious eggplant and SPICY tofu!

Then in search of another tea shop, the Huangshan Tea Company. We found that it moved across the street from its old location. The tea here is packaged nicely for gifts and they had very pretty flowering jasmine. Next door is a little bakery called Lily’s. They had excellent egg custard tarts with really flaky pastry! What a nice treat.

Got a cab and headed to Dragonfly for our appointment. I had an aromatherapy massage. It was very nice, although I’ve never had my tummy massages before. And I wish she did my feet cause they hurt from walking.

After our massages we went across the street to Jenny’s bar for drinks and a light dinner. The staff & her kitty cat there are very nice and friendly.

Got back to the hotel. A few of us decided to take a night cruise along the Huangpu. Headed to the Bund & got our tickets. We had time to kill so we got drinks at a coffee shop nearby. Another case of bad English translations. While I thought I was getting a strawberry frozen smoothie, I got a pile of shaved ice with strawberry topping that tasted like jam. Hmm.

The night cruise was wonderful. Really scenic, amazing how much new development there is. China will be a force to be reckoned with, for sure. I am glad we “upgraded” to the front of the boat. Much less crowded, plus the smell of the exhaust would have made us ill.

Day 12: After breakfast, we took 2 cabs to Yu Yuan Gardens. Thankfully we had a meeting place, cause the cabs dumped us off in 2 different areas and we all had to figure out which way to get to the garden itself!

We had tea at the Huxington Tea House. Very pretty. Loved looking out of the windows and seeing the activity below. The flowering jasmine is so pretty.

The Yu Yuan garden is quite beautiful. Rivals the gardens in Suzhou. So much detail in the architecture. Amazing.

We split up, window shopped in the area and had lunch at the famous dumpling house. It was the only restaurant where we had to wait for a table, but the wait wasn’t too long, about 15 minutes. Worth the wait. We tried all kinds of dumplings and I also tried the “crab ovary soup” which was really crab roe.

With our tummies filled, we walked all the way back to the Bund and walked around the city. Getting a cab back to the French Concession was truly maddening tho. Not only was it Friday and rush hour, it was the day before the national holiday. Every cab we tried to hail was booked. Even a nice policeman tried to help. Well after and hour of walking, we finally got a cab and headed to Dragonfly again. This time I really wanted a foot massage and got one. It was so relaxing I fell asleep.

Afterwards, we met up at Jenny’s again for drinks and had our last night’s dinner at “Special” restaurant, a restaurant that one of the girls went to the other day. We got a private room and had a great feast for our last night together.

Catching a cab home was really an adventure: streets were being closed for national day and our cabbie didn’t know this. So we drove around for an hour trying to get back to our hotel. I chalked it up to like having a last minute tour around the city. It was amazing, it was like trying to drive around NYC during new year’s eve; there were so many people out! We ended up getting dropped off 2 blocks from the hotel. I think our cabbie called it a night from that point on.

Day 13: Repacked for the flight home. Walked around the hotel and picked up some drinks for the flight home. I became addicted to the bottled jasmine tea. We all decided to leave much earlier in the day and just get to the airport (God forbid it would be like last night), so we left the hotel at noon for our 3pm flight. No problems with traffic this afternoon, we got to the airport in 45 minutes and the cabs were Y150 each.

The end. Had a wonderful time, the people were friendly, the food was delicious. Would go back in a heartbeat.

wow what a trip.. you have energy!!...Can I ask how to contact Mr Qi and where did you find out about him???

Very good and comprehensive trip report, quimbymoy - it made me feel like a slacker.

I agree that the traffic in Chinese cities can be overwhelming, but we never found the cabs scary, and despite the apparent chaos we were impressed by the way drivers continually nudge their way into the next lane with a complete absence of road rage. I thought the cabbies had this down to a fine art - had to, or they'd never get anywhere. Often I'd notice our driver picking out a nice shiny black BMW or Audi, whose driver, unwilling to risk a scrape from a crappy VW Santana, would happily let him barge in. There are rules of a kind - just not our rules.

Almost without exception we found Chinese cabbies efficient and good-humoured. Efficient from our perspective, but maybe not for their cars - their efforts to reduce petrol consumption by invariably using too high a gear must surely be more than offset by short engine life.

Definitely cross the street in a pack - it's always comforting to surround yourself with a buffer of bodies. But let me tell you, compared to crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City it's a breeze.

Hello Hypatia,
We got Mr. Qi from the CITS office where we booked our trip. He was the guide assigned to us and was our favorite guide. I highly recommend him. I'm not sure if he takes on jobs without having to go thru the CITS office, but you can certainly try.

His cell phone number is +86-13977323219.

What a great trip! Hope you could visit China again.

Terrific report! so much fun to read! Thanks for sharing!