tominrm

I am planning an eight-week tour of China for this fall. So I have read several trip reports in this forum, and they almost always mention car-with-driver, taxi, and/or tour guide. I know it is convenient and it ensures everything important is covered, but I am wondering how difficult it would be to tour the country without depending on taxis or tour guides.
Local people have to be able to visit Yellow Mountain, Hanging Temple, etc. without having own cars or tour guides. How difficult would it be if one tries to depend on public transportation? What would be the most difficult part in this case? I have not checked all the places yet, but I think I can find places to stay through Hotel.com. I will have China data service to connect my iPhone to the internet. I do not think I will visit the cities or places not mentioned in this forum. Any suggestions or comments are appreciated.

kja

I visited independently with minimum use of taxis, tours, or cars with drivers -- I used them only when absolutely necessary for my purposes. My report is a bit old; maybe you missed it?
http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...na-amazing.cfm

CanadaChinaTraveller

It is not really difficult to do on your own if you prepare well.
drivers are certainly not a requirement except that you mention two places that are out of town. One can go to the Wall by public bus but it is not so simple (except Badaling). most people hire a driver for the day. You need a driver for the Hanging Temple. There are a few other sites like this where a driver is needed.
you have a good amount of time. you need to plan your itinerary and we can give more precise advice.

kja

I don't believe a driver is needed for the Hanging Temple, and I believe there is a comment within my trip report that provides the details.

CaliforniaLady

It all depends on your travel style and budget. In China, we used drivers, but not guides. We hired them through our hotels, and it generally worked out well. For shorter rides, taxis are fine and inexpensive. In between cities, we flew. I'm not a train person, but many folks here have given good reviews to the trains. You may end of using a mix of transportation modes.

As CCT said above, it's best to sketch out an itinerary, which will be a challenge if you're going to be out for eight weeks. Only then can you see how everything looks. I typically use a legal pad, pencil and eraser in order to work out a feasible first draft itinerary. Post again, and folks here can help you with more specific questions.

kja

Let's not forget that China has an extensive public transpiration network, particularly since that seems to be the OP's preference.

thursdaysd

My last trip to China was seven weeks solo. I did use a very occasional car and driver (e.g. For the Hanging Monastery), and I took a day tour to the panda reserve outside Chengdu, but otherwise I traveled entirely by train and bus, plus one ferry. While I prefer to travel on the ground, there seem to be plenty of flights for those who don't.

Planning for a long trip is no more difficult than planning for a short one. Like the trip, it just takes longer. I use blank calendar pages printed off the internet.

CanadaChinaTraveller

"I don't believe a driver is needed for the Hanging Temple, and I believe there is a comment within my trip report that provides the details." - I have to assume that you have not been there.

temppeternh

> I am wondering how difficult it would be to tour the country without depending on taxis or tour guides.

It is so un-difficult that hundreds of thousands of people without two words of Mandarin to rub together do it every year.

There is nowhere without some form of public transport, even if only in the back of a farm vehicle or post office bus (although you have to get fairly remote for that to become necessary). Sometimes taking a taxi adds convenience, and is cheap, but a car and driver is always expensive. The Hanging Temple can certainly be reached by bus, but people choose taxis, or one of the rare examples of a convenient one-day CITS tour, to see the Hanging Temple and Mu Ta (pagoda) or caves in one day rather than two. Public transport is omnipresent, but there's nothing wrong with judicious use of taxis and one-day tours of the kind taken by Chinese where convenience trumps modest increased cost.

> I think I can find places to stay through Hotel.com

You could, but you certainly shouldn't, unless you want to pay considerably more than you need to, sometimes find the hotel little resembles what you were expecting, and want to lose the main benefit of independent travel (other than economy), which is flexibility. Show up, enter a hotel you like the look of, view the room, bargain down the price, and pay at least 30% less and as much as 70% less then the posted prices. Don't like it? Just look in the one next door. In almost all Chinese destinations for almost the entire year the supply of accommodation at all levels well exceeds supply. At the very least stick to 'jingji' (economy) hotel chains which have fixed prices, and just book the next as you leave the one. See Hanting, Shindom, Motel 268, JoyInn, Home Inn, Jinjiang, etc. But foreign hotel booking sites? Never, not for any kind of hotel in China.

Kathie

CCT, your assumption is incorrect.

CanadaChinaTraveller

Please explain to us how you went there by public transportation and without a taxi.

kja

I did indeed visit the Hanging Temple. I did not visit it by bus – nor did I claim to have done so. If you look at my trip report, you will see that I was very clear in stating that I worked with the CITS office in Datong to share a car and driver with another couple; we used it to visit the Hanging Temple and Wooden Pagoda. What I said upthread is that I believed there was a comment in my trip report about how to do so, and there is such a comment, although it is not the detailed one that I recall, just a brief comment about using intercity buses to get there. IIRC, that option had been discussed in a separate thread here on Fodor’s around the the time I went.

CanadaChinaTraveller

I tried to do it by bus.
The only bus that goes there drops you 5km away from the Temple. You take a car for the balance. When you leave the Temple, there are cars waiting to take you back to the bus. The drivers are charging crazy prices for this short ride or to take you back to town. You are stuck there with no means of leaving other than accept their grossly inflated prices. You will also have to share the car and wait until it is full before they depart.
I wasted a couple of hours after visiting the Temple because my stubborn girlfriend just refused to be scammed. I was certainly was not going to walk the 5km back. She eventually gave up after a couple of hours and we shared a car with a Japanese tourist.
So, you can't quite get there by public bus.

kja

@ CanadaChinaTraveller: Sounds frustrating! Glad I didn't experience that.

@ tominrm: Despite this digression, the point is (I think) that you can visit just about anything you might want to see by public transportation. There are some places that might be most easily or conveniently seen by tour or car & driver or taxi, but you could skip them and still see some incredible places.

temppeternh

@kja There's the CITS bus, but that doesn't run every day, as noted. Since I was last there I've seen mentions of other direct buses from Datong, but I never saw those on any of my earlier visits (which, of course, says nothing about whether they exist now. If other people say they do, perhaps they do.) Otherwise there are plentiful buses to Hunyuan, and from there a 4km walk-not much for most of us, or, if preferred, buses that run south down the S203 past the turning to Baiyue Hengshan stopping at various small communities and that will drop you at the turning to the Hanging Monastery parking lot. Standing on the other side of the road and flagging down any passing bus will get you back. Just in case you ever plan to return.

The only times I can remember being left with no alternative whatsoever to taxis were reaching some particularly obscure cave temple set in mid-Ningxia, when I took a bus to the nearest village and then bargained with a farmer for a lift in the back of his three-wheeler. Crossing the border from southeast Xinjiang to northwestern Gansu involved using a post bus--still public transport but had to get the local policeman to tell the driver to take myself and two companions because he wanted to make cash on the side by transporting pig carcasses instead. We ended up with those on our feet.

Visiting abandoned cities off the modern road on the south side of the Taklamakan also unavoidably involved taxis. But, in general, unless you're getting really impossibly obscure and visiting uninhabited places, in a country where car ownership remains anything but the norm (despite the jams in the big metropolises), there's *always* public transport of some sort or another to anywhere that's inhabited, and it will drop you anywhere you like en route.

It's not always as convenient or frequent as you'd like, and in rural areas you may share with chickens and sheep, but then for some of us that's part of the fun. And some times it's just more convenient to take a cab bargained for a fixed price to take you, wait, and return, the point being to board where there's competition between drivers and alternative options, rather than putting yourself in the difficult position of having none and being at the drivers' mercy. There-and-back arrangements are best in most cases.

I still fondly remember sitting at the side of a narrow country road near Genghis Khan's mausoleum, out in the middle of nowhere, just enjoying the peace, listening to the birds, and waiting to see what passed to get me back to Dongsheng. Same getting back from the Margary memorial in far southwestern Yunnan, having been dropped there by some farmers. Ended up in the front of a shared taxi for a fixed price, and being long delayed by flocks of goats occupying the road. Such are some rush hours. But very few here will be going anywhere quite so obscure (although I'd warmly encourage them to do so), and the OP should indeed understand that in all other places there are transport options galore. And especially in places where taxi drivers tell you there are none.

kja

@ temppeternh: Thanks for the directions, and even more, thanks for sharing those stories -- what priceless experiences!

kvchina

OP, you certainly don't need to take tours, but there are times when arranging your own local transport is a smart purchase over irregular, complex and/or time-consuming bus connections. If you have 9 hours of daylight to sightsee, spending 3 hours on transport and 6 on the "meat" of the sights is infinitely preferable to spending 6 hours on transport and 3 on the sights.

I don't think hotels.com is the best site to use, but I would certainly consider booking some accommodation in advance--depending on exactly where you are going and when. Big Chinese cities are not conducive to wandering up and down streets looking for a place to stay in real-time--it's exhausting and inefficient. If you find a place on a major booking site that you like, contact the hotel/hostel directly by email and see if they'll match or beat the online price. In small towns with lodging concentrated along a few streets, using the walk-in/negotiation method can work (unless traveling during a major Chinese holiday period).

temppeternh

> Big Chinese cities are not conducive to wandering up and down streets looking for a place to stay in real-time--it's exhausting and inefficient.

This is a case of putting in your assumptions that which you wish to find in your conclusions. It isn't typically either exhausting or inefficient, and when hotels are typically clumped together the size of the city makes no difference. In over 30 years of extensive travel in China I've never once booked a hotel in advance (save for one jingji booking close to Pudong Airport, which I subsequently had to cancel).

> contact the hotel/hostel directly by email and see if they'll match or beat the online price

This simply doesn't work. Even if a reply is received at all it won't get you anywhere near the best price.

Only two categories of hotel are worth booking in advance: the top-end foreign-run hotels that guarantee their lowest prices are available on their own websites (although even there a further small discount may be obtained at the counter if checking in in the afternoon); and the 'jingji' chain hotels mentioned above that have fixed prices. In almost all circumstances all other categories of Chinese-run hotel are cheaper when bargained for at the counter--and usually very significantly cheaper. There's also the chance to discover that any photos seen are actually ten years old and there's been no redecoration in that period, that the room is directly opposite a construction site, or similar.

Hotels tend to be clustered together even in big cities, which makes the process there no different from that in small towns. Guide books and on-line sources such as ctrip and elong give a limited account of what's available in a particular town (there's always a great deal more). Anything featured in guide books or recommended on the infinitely vacuous and misleading TripAdvisor is certainly somewhere you'll end up paying more for. Ctrip's amazing (to anyone who doesn't know China) discounts provide a clue as to what everyone who shows up and bargains is actually paying, which is usually a little less still than the Ctrip etc. price.

Pick a hotel that looks possible and is in a cluster, head for that, check a room, bargain a price, and if you don't like it head for the door (which will produce the lowest final offer) and look into a neighbouring hotel. If in a group then one person or more can remain in the lobby of the first hotel with the baggage while the neighbouring hotels are checked. Alternatively just leave the bags in the taxi and ask it to wait (which costs very little) until the room's been checked and a deal struck.

Some may prefer not to approach things this way, although it's long been the standard approach for independent travellers and only recently in China has booking in advance even become possible for non-Mandarin speakers, and that's entirely up to them. But it's commonplace--Chinese hotel walk-ins are vastly higher proportion of bookings in China than elsewhere, it's the route to avoiding nasty surprises, and the way to the best value for money, often in newer hotels not yet listed anywhere, eager for business, and with correspondingly lower prices.

CanadaChinaTraveller

Walking around Beijing or Shanghai, for example, looking for a hotel is certainly a big waste of time and not very productive.
Better to do the shopping online, check reviews and look for the best price (often by booking with the hotel directly).
I have walked around smaller towns looking for a hotel either because I wanted to look at the place first (such as Fenghuang) or no advance booking is even possible (Dehang). Otherwise I prefer to enjoy my time rather than stress out looking for a place.
I also think that ultimately it depends on one's travel style. For a first timer who is somewhat worried about the language barrier (which is not that great most of the time), booking ahead is probably a good choice although booking a couple of days ahead if often enough.

kja

As a first time traveler with at best a few words of Mandarin, I did exactly what temppeternh said to find hotels; it worked just fine for me, and was hardly a waste of time. I got a room at most of my first choices and only had to go to a backup -- always very nearby -- a couple of times. I can understand if people don't want to do it, but it really wasn't a big deal.