My husband and I will be on a Southeast Asia cruise in March 2010 with stops in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. We've been to these cities in 1998 but for these short stops would like to connect with a private English speaking guide/driver. Hope someone has some recommendat ions and contact information.

There is absolutely no need for a guide in Hong Kong. And you'll want to use public transport rather than a car and driver anyway.

No need for a guide in Beijing or Shanghai either. If you haven't been since '98 you'll be amazed by how much they've changed.

Thanks Kathie and Thursdaysd....I got around Hong Kong on the subway when last there and we managed around Shanghei from our centrally located hotel 10 years ago. But I have no idea where we dock and it's proximity to the city so that's why I thought maybe I need a guide. Also, I'm not as mobile as I used to be 10 years ago...

And Kathie...just read on your profile about your wishes and plans for Kauai and African safari. My husband and I just returned from a private safari in Tanzania which was great...and our son lives on Kauai, has a scuba and snorkel business there for 10yrs+ so if I can share any info about either of these places...let me know.

By the way, still trying to get a guide in BKK...so far haven't heard from Tong, just contacted Ratt..and another rocommendation on this thread, Tan...so wish me luck.

It might be worth finding out where you dock in Shanghai - perhaps someone on cruisecritic.com might know? Or your cruise line? I took a night ferry from Putuoshan to Shanghai and it docked a good ways out of the city (the family sharing my cabin were kind enough to give me a lift!)

For Beijing you will also dock a good ways away, but there is a new fast train from Tianjin into town (30 minutes to Beijing South). I see some travel agency is asking $250 for a car and driver for 1-2 passengers for the same trip!!! Don't do it! Beijing has plenty of taxis, and the metro has been considerably extended.

Thanks for the offer, Sandra. We go to Kauai every year, so don't need help in that area.

As you know, cruise companies love to charge outrageous prices for their tours. You can use taxis or public transport instead for much, much less. One of our experts here, Peter N-H, always says you are better off with a good guidebook than a guide in Chinese cities.

I was also on an Oceania cruise in March a couple of years ago. The guides we used were Konglin in Beijing and Shen Shen in Shanghai.
I liked Konglin because he took us to see what we wanted to see and not to any government sponsored shops etc.
Many fodorites have used them both.
He also dropped us off at the port to catch our ship.

Thanks all....and emdee, could you please give us contact information for Kopglin in Beijing? And we have an overnight in Shanghai...so if you recommend Shen Shen, also pleae include contact information.

http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...our-guides.cfm

This is precisely the kind of guide you want to avoid: English-language site targeting foreigners who know no better with absurdly high prices, for trips to well-known sites for which a guide is certainly not needed, and any information you bring from home more accurate. Just flag down a taxi and pay a fraction of the prices quoted here, or be taken for a ride in two senses.

PeterN...thanks for your point of view. Well taken! But here's my needs. We'll be far from Beijong when we dock...so we need a transfer from the ship to our hotel in Beijing.
Yes, we could take the ship's transfer to the airport, and then get transportation from there to Beijing, but that will
be time consuming with many people, luggage and all.

And, yes I could take taxi's in Beijing and Shanghai and I've taken the subway in Hong Kong....but these legs aren't what they used to be, and private transportation has been most helpful in other ports...so if you, or others on the board,
can recommend guides you've used, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance

I think it's been very clearly said that guides cannot be recommended, and why that's the case. This is nothing to do with a 'point of view' but is merely a description of the realities, and wishing they were otherwise won't change them, unfortunately.

I must admit I'm far from clear how having a guide saves your legs. Whether accompanied by someone pouring inaccuracies into your ear or not, surely you still need to get about? Simply walking out of your hotel and getting into a taxi will offer as much convenience and relief as you are going to get. Similarly, so will walking out of your destination and getting a taxi to your next. A guide would only be a further inconvenience. There are disadvantages, in Beijing's traffic, with not using the metro system, but it's true there are often no down escalators, no lifts, and long staircases instead. But Beijing's 87,500 taxis are omnipresent, and except occasionally at lunch time and at the late afternoon handover period you'll very rarely have to wait more than about ten seconds to get one. Simply retain a card from your hotel (which you usually be given) to show to the driver when you want to get back, and have your destinations for the day written down by someone at reception, or show the driver the characters from your guide book or map.

As for getting from Tianjin to Beijing, again a guide isn't going to make life easier for you. Chartering a vehicle to get you directly from ship to hotel might, but that is difficult to arrange without going through a rapacious agency. You are unlikely to find a taxi at Tanggu (unless a 'black' one) willing to take you all the way to Beijing. Actually the most practical and convenient route overall would indeed be to take the offered transfer to Beijing's Capital Airport (assuming this isn't massively overpriced) and switch to a taxi to take you directly to your hotel (around ¥100 including road toll of ¥10 and fuel supplement of ¥1, added to the meter price). There are porters at the airport with a clearly displayed fixed fee (¥10, no tipping) who can take your luggage to the taxi rank if you wish. It helps, but isn't essential, to have the name of your hotel in Chinese characters, which you can print out from its website before you leave home. This is certainly the route I would personally choose, if it weren't that I've yet to ride the world's second fastest conventional train service, from Tianjin to Beijing. This would be less 'time consuming', but would involve taxi to Tianjin (from Tanggu dock, although there are also a few services from Tanggu's station, so it might only be necessary to drive a short distance), switch to train, then taxi to hotel. However, there's highway all the way from Tianjin to Beijing's airport, so the inconvenience of this longer, slower route by bus not great.

Peter N-H

OK Peter....I got it...and thanks! Unless some one's ex-pat brother who lives in Beijing can take us around...it will be
taxi's and the fast train...

I suggest you look into Limo/car and driver services for Beijing and Shanghai. They are geared to the bussiness traveler but work really well for the tourist too. Plus the services, though more than taking a taxi, are not nearly as expensive as a true tour guide, driver and car or a ship's tour.

We are in our 60's and I have big time knee and feet problems, so too much walking and definitely stairs can be a problem for me. We have visited Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong several times from cruise ships. Most recently March 2009 when we were in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It has been 4 years since we were in Beiging and I don't think the fast train was working yet.

The port for Beiging was an absolute mess with torn up roads and all sorts of construction around the docks so we used the ship's transfer to get from the hotel to the ship, but several people used private cars and were pleased. There is an active section on Beiging in the Ports of Call section of cruise critic that should have up to date information on how to best do the transfer with out using the ship's option.

When I was arranging transportation for us in Shanghai this year, I used a car and driver service. The car picked us up at the ship (we were on the small Ocean Princess that can the dock right near the Bund). The company said they could also meet us at the dock an hour out of town used by the larger ships if needed. There are two listed if you google limo service for Shanghai. I think one of the places also has service in Beiging. Anyway, It was a flat fee for the car and driver and worked out well. We paid when the day was over also which I also liked.

I told the contact what we wanted to see and also made sure that we could adjust the stops on that day if we wanted. We went to one of the water towns outside the city. There the driver went with with us at my reguest to translate signs etc for us, though he was not a guide, he did speak some English. That worked really well too. Back in town, he just dropped us at the places we wanted to go and picked us up later at a set time and place. We hired the car for 8 hours and he left us in town about 4pm. This was a last minute change. We wanted to stay a while longer. The whole day was very easy and worth what we paid.

We then made our way back to the ship by taxi. We caught the taxi on the bund. The driver could see the ship and we had the card with the address in Chinese, but the driver didn't have a clue and drove right by the dock entrance. We got him to stop and got out two blocks later. Had to walk back to the ship (hard on me!). So inspite of what some will say, though there is no reason to get a guide for Beiging and Shanghai, it is definitely nice to have a private car and driver who knows where you want to go. We will use the car service again! Much better and easier than messing with taxis and trying to figure out buses and subways! We also had the name and ph# of the main office in case we had a problem.

Hong Kong is a different story...taxis and the star ferry are the way to go. We had a small map and just showed the driver where we wanted to go, if he didn't understand us. There was very lillte extra walking to get from place to place. Hong Kong is also much more tourist friendly than Shanghai in our experience..

> The whole day was very easy and worth what we paid.

We're missing the key piece of information here: how much? Then we might discuss whether it was worth what was paid.

Well Peter, we paid $125 dollars for the eight hours of being driven around to places of our picking in an a/c, clean, comfortable, new sedan... or a little over $15 an hour including tolls in and out of downtown, tip and the small addmission to the water town.

We paid $5 for a 10 minute botched taxi ride in a dirty, beat up taxi that had no a/c and didn't even get us to the ship that we could plainly see. We walked back to the ship which would have been no big deal if my knees didn't bother me. It wasn't worth the hassel to deal with another taxi driver, however.

This is an great forum for travel information that I have found very helpful, usually. I just offerred what we did that worked very well for us for what we felt was a reasonable cost.

I will let the people looking for information on ways to comfortablely get around in Shanghai, make up their own minds as to the value of a car and driver vs a taxi.

Hi SandraJoy,
ShenShen can be reached at shanghaitours.net
Kong Lin - I couldnt find his emailaddress. but I know he is on linked as well as facebook. I learnt about him when ekscrunchy used him some years ago.

Hope this helps

> Well Peter, we paid $125 dollars for the eight hours of being driven around to places of our picking in an a/c, clean, comfortable, new sedan... or a little over $15 an hour including tolls in and out of downtown, tip and the small addmission to the water town.

Sounds reasonable by developed world standards. But you're not in the developed world. In China that is a grotesquely large sum of money to pay to get around even if you were travelling a long distance out of town and back, let alone for short hops between sights and not even being in the vehicle for most of the time. This is a foreigner-targeting figure no Chinese would pay even for the same service. Probably by hopping around in taxis the whole thing could have been accomplished for a fifth of that cost, or likely less.

> We paid $5 for a 10 minute botched taxi ride in a dirty, beat up taxi that had no a/c and didn't even get us to the ship that we could plainly see. We walked back to the ship which would have been no big deal if my knees didn't bother me. It wasn't worth the hassel to deal with another taxi driver, however.

But a single taxi journey is hardly statistically significant, is it? Before dismissing the taxi experience altogether it is necessary to experience it in some meaningful way, which won't, on average, be remotely as you describe. Rare the taxi these days without air conditioning, models (depending on city) may even include Mercedes-Benz but there are plentiful high-end Volkswagens, Audis, Hyundais and others, and most destinations requested are high-traffic and well-known to drivers. If the destination is provided in characters problems are rare, and adding the telephone number for less-visited destinations is sufficient to solve any problems. Drivers just call up and get directions. Each individual journey will cost a tiny fraction of the sum mentioned, and there's no need to pay for time when the vehicle isn't being used.

Readers should be very careful indeed of English-language websites targeting the travel services of Chinese companies at foreigners. Even if a private car is deemed a necessity, there's no need to pay anything like this figure to go round town for a day.

Feeling that something is good value simply because it is cheaper than the price at home simply makes no sense. The question is whether a fair local going rate has been paid, and whether the real or imagined inconvenience of an alternative is worth the substantial difference in price.

Peter N-H

SandraJoy,

If you want the contact information for our car and driver, I will look it up for you. Have a good trip!

Sandra and Emdee:

Kong Lin's e-mail is:

[email protected]

I used him as a guide in Beijing in 2007.




On a related noted: I am returning to Shanghai in March. I have already been to the city and am well aware that I do not need a guide. However, I would be interested to learn if anyone knows the name of a well-educated and personable local or expat who might be able to offer some insight into the city's architecture and history, (and perhaps local food) , for a few hours..