brunot82

Hi everyone! need some advicesto plan my trip to China with my wife. We are on our early 30s and due to miles combination we arrive and depart from Hong Kong, althou we are really interested in China itself.

So, aside from the days of our arrival and departure, we will have 14 days to esplore China. Could you help us on an itinerary?
We don´t want to miss Beijing, Xi´an, and maybe the country side of China like venices of Guilin. We may also be interested in the water towns near Shanghai.

I know that it may be to much in too little time, that´s why I need your advices.


Thanks to all

kja

I haven't been to Hong Kong, Guillin, or Shanghai yet, but thought Beijing easily worth at least 6 full days for a first visit and Xi'an worth 2 or 3 days. BUT it depends on your interests. I recommend that you get some good guidebooks (or spend some time with a few in your local library), identify the things you most want to see in each location, note their opening/closing times, and mark them on a calendar. Then pencil in your transportation, add some time on either side (for getting to/from your lodging, checking in/out, packing/unpacking, getting oriented, etc.). Then see how things fit together. FWIW, I found the guidebooks that involved Peter Neville-Hadley to be particularly helpful, so you might give special attention to the Eyewitness guide books and check the editors. There's also a now outdated Frommer's guide that has excellent information about local foods.

Whatever else you do, please take Beijing's pollution levels into consideration and make sure you take appropriate steps to protect yourselves. Here's some info:
http://www.fodors.com/community/asia...y-forecast.cfm

brunot82

Thank you, kja! I will definitely get a good guidebook and I still have almost six months left to prepare this trip. What I am looking for is for suggestions from the fellow travelers who have been there, specially when planning the logistics for such a short travel period (14 days).

Also, could you or anyone recommend some good movies about China, which shows landscape, or some places of interest?

Cheers!!

kja

"What I am looking for is for suggestions from the fellow travelers who have been there"

In that case:

(a) read our trip reports -- you can find them on the CHINA page of this forum. You can also find mine by clicking on my screen name and then scrolling to the bottom. It is a LONG report, but like ALL trip reports on this forum, it is searchable. AND

(b) look at planning threads where you will see lots of useful information.

I'm sure you don't expect each of us to repeat all of our advice when you can find it yourself! ;-) Then post any specific questions you have, and I think you will find that Fodorites are generous with their knowledge.

JPDeM

Typical first trip to China for 2 weeks would be Beijing (4-5 days), Xi'An (2 days), Yangshuo (3 days). So this is about 10 days already. Then you need to choose between HK and Shanghai (plus surrounding area) for the remaining time. It think that trying to do both would be somewhat rushed and may require that you cut a day here and there from the 3 places that I listed above. Also, in a way, while these two cities are different, they offer a "similar experience". both are large, modern and fairly international in contrast to a place like Yangshuo which is about nature.
Ultimately, it really depends on your interests.

brunot82

JPDeM, thanks for your advice!

since I will have to get my plane in HK, I will have to go there.

I was thinking of something like: beijing 4 days, xian 2, shanghai 2, Yangshuo 2, HK 3 (one day to go to Macau)

The logistics is what worries me more. I thought of taking a plane from HK to beijijng on the the of my arrival and grom Guilin to HK in the end of my trip. the other travels I thought of taking overnight trains..

Would you advise me not to go to all theses places?

temppeternh

Logistics should indeed worry you as you appear not to have allowed for the time it takes to get round China.

Abandon Shanghai as it has rather less to offer, you'll already be seeing Beijing, it will add a great deal of travel, and Hong Kong does what Shanghai does rather better anyway.

You mentioned an interest in the Chinese countryside? You can reach that easily enough from Beijing, and Yangshuo certainly isn't it, unless you think pizza and McDonald's are routinely available in the Chinese countryside. It's tawdry, fake, over-touristed, rapacious, and barely China at all—a sort of Disney version. Almost any other corner of the countryside (and there's no shortage) would be more representative.

Never be in a hurry in China, and do not rigidly plan your itinerary to the last second as you will be very unlikely to be able to follow it. Do not book everything in advance as a) there's no need, b) it's more expensive, and c) it deprives you of one of the greatest benefits of independent travel--flexibility and the ability to stay longer at somewhere you like, leave somewhere you don't like more quickly, and alter your plans after receiving fresh information while on the road.

Beijing, Xi'an, plus a countryside location is plenty for two weeks. Note if you fly back to Hong Kong it is usually far cheaper to fly to Shenzhen and then take the direct bus from the airport to Hong Kong. Or you can take a high-speed ferry direct from Shenzhen Airport to Macau, stay a night there, and then carry on to Hong Kong. For your rural stop you might consider Kaiping, not far from Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Macau, and Shenzhen, and connected by high-speed ferry to Hong Kong, too (shuttle bus to Zhong Shan, then ferry).

Google for the watchtowers of Kaiping. Here's someone's blog about it:

http://randomwire.com/watchtowers-of-kaiping/

http://www.cksp.com.hk/eng/ship_schedule/main.html

for the ferries.

brunot82

Great tips, temppeternh! thank you!

so just to clarify: you don't recommend Yangshuo whatsoever or you just don't recommend it as a countryside destination?

Don't you think it's risky not to plan everything in advance and travel with our bags looking for hotels we haven't previously booked and taking the risk of having to go to two or three hotels in order to find a room?

cheers!

kja

"Don't you think it's risky not to plan everything in advance and travel with our bags looking for hotels we haven't previously booked and taking the risk of having to go to two or three hotels in order to find a room?"

Doing that can work quite well. As I wrote in my trip report, I found a room at the first hotel I tried in all but 2 of the cities I visited; in those 2 cities, I found a room at my nearby back-up option. I did reserve for my first few nights because I knew I would have a very long flight and didn't expect to be thinking very clearly just after that.

brunot82

kja, would you say that this same "strategy" could be applied to internal travels (trains and/or domestic flights) in order to let ourselves free to travel the day after we had previously planned or one day before?

If it were 10 years ago and we were travelling as backpackers,I wouldn´t even being asking this question.

laurenanne

We spent three weeks in China, including Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. Here is our itinerary:
Hong Kong Arrive May 20th Butterfly on Wellington
Flight HK-Guilin, drive to Yangshuo
Yangshao 21st yangshuo moondance (Best choice, we thought)
Yangshao 22nd yangshuo moondance
Yangshao 23rd yangshuo moondance
Ping'an Day trip24th yangshuo moondance
Flight to Shangri-La
Zhongdian 25th Songtsam (LOVED THIS HOTEL!)
Zhongdian 26th Songtsam
Flight to Lijiang
Lijiang 27th Blosshom Hill Inn (some charm, rooms quirky)
Lijiang 28th Blossom Hill Inn
Lijiang-Kunming on overnight sleeper 29th
Kun-Beij 30th A. Hotel- Agoda
Beij 31st A. Hotel- Agoda
Beij June 1st The Orchid- direct
Beij 2nd The Orchid- direct
Beij-shanghai 3rd Shanghai Imperial Palace- agoda
Shanghai 4th Denotel
Shanghai 5th Denotel
Shanghai 6th Denotle
Shang-Hong Kong 7th Apartment on airbnb
Hong Kong 8th Apartment on airbnb
Hong Kong 9th Apartment on airbnb

kja

I did not use internal flights.

I generally booked my next train trip upon arrival anywhere, and do not know what would have happened had I always waited until the end to do so. The one train I tried to book "day-of" was fully booked for the time I had targeted, but was available at a convenient time later that day. Since I traveled to China, I believe the booking system for trains has changed, so my observations may be completely irrelevant at this time.

I should note that my goal in NOT booking hotels / trains in advance had less to do with flexibility (although that was a consideration) and MUCH more to do with my goal to avoid over-paying by several orders of magnitude.

If you want to stay in a Western-style hotel, I suspect that the advantages of waiting until you arrive to find a hotel are attenuated.

JPDeM

"Don't you think it's risky not to plan everything in advance and travel with our bags looking for hotels we haven't previously booked and taking the risk of having to go to two or three hotels in order to find a room?"
That depends on many factors including mainly your own travel style and personality. It also depends on whether you are traveling by yourself (more flexible) or with family (less flexibility).
Nowadays there are a lot of bullet trains so these are usually not a big deal but on some routes, especially with train bookings opening 60 days ahead, tickets are often sold out several days ahead.
In your case, these are well traveled routes and transportation should not be a big deal unless you are considering overnight trains.
As said above, when going to HK it is usually cheaper to fly domestically to Shenzhen although the last time that I did it( from Shanghai) the price difference of $10 did not justify the trouble and cost of getting across from Shenzhen to HK. Note that if you are going to HK from Guilin, the bullet train now goes to Shenzhen in a little over 3 hours. Depending on when you'l go, the Yangshuo train station may be opened by then although it may not be much more convenient than the Guilin station.

temppeternh

> so just to clarify: you don't recommend Yangshuo whatsoever or you just don't recommend it as a countryside destination?

Er... I think if you look back I think you'll see the language makes it pretty clear I mean both. Of course, if you like sitting back in rebuilt or built-yesterday pretend-old village cafe with a bad cappuccino and a distant relative of spaghetti carbonara with your meal frequently interrupted by pestering guides before shopping for fake DVDs and knock-off LV bags and then taking a minibus tour to a tawdry son-et-lumiere among what were once peaceful hills, then it's for you. But it isn't really China, except insofar as it represents that country's instinct for self-Disneyfication when there's money to be made.

> Don't you think it's risky not to plan everything in advance and travel with our bags looking for hotels we haven't previously booked and taking the risk of having to go to two or three hotels in order to find a room?

Well, no, not really, which was why it was suggested. I've been travelling regularly for extended periods or living in China since 1986. I've never done it any other way because:

I want flexibility
I don't want to pay over the odds
The supply of hotels at all levels is vastly greater than demand at almost all locations for almost the entire year
Guidebooks simply can't and don't keep up with new openings, and new openings are nearly always the best
I can't trust advance representations of rooms (below foreign-run top end all hotel websites and hotel booking websites in China misrepresent) and want to look at a room before I pay for it
Hotels tend to come in clumps, so rejecting a first choice selected in advance often means walking next door or across the street

and I've only once had a problem, when I happened to arrive in Ningbo when there was a major conference. And even then 'problem' meant paying more than usual for a room I'd had much cheaper before, and whose price fell again the next day.

Look at your guidebook (but be aware its selections, if long-standing and found in several guides are likely to cost more than its neighbours) if you like and make a selection in an area which appears to have a clump of hotels (e.g. look it up on Google maps). Look it up on a Chinese booking website such as ctrip.com if you wish to see the Ctrip price you're probably going to beat by turning up and bargaining (ignore everything else said about the hotel, which may be entirely false, and do NOT book with the site). You should be able to see many other hotels in the neighbourhood and indeed there will be many more that Ctrip doesn't know about. Be aware that the order of presentation is based on profit for Ctrip not on suitability for your purposes so scroll down and down and down (honestly, I don't bother with any of this). So pick a hotel that's convenient to what you think you want to do and head for it, but if you see something nearby that looks brand new that's almost certainly a better choice: cleaner, more functional, eager for your business, and lower-priced when you bargain than something oft-mentioned by visitors, longer-standing, and with fewer stars. It goes without saying that you should entirely ignore Trip Advisor unless you are desperate to be misled and pay more, too.

You can leave your bags in the taxi if you wish while you check your first choice will do, and then continue on to other hotels in the same car. The taxi/bags aren't going anywhere, the charge for waiting time is pennies.

All this only looks tricky in any way from outside. It isn't at all. Some people will never be convinced of this, or it simply isn't the way they like to do things, and that's entirely fair enough. Holidays are what we make of them, and some prefer cost and (apparent) convenience.

As for travel, simply look to book a route out on arrival at each destination, but there are typically so many choices, and booking last-minute is the norm in China, that it is rarely a problem. The absence of hiccups cannot be guaranteed and during Chinese New Year and a few days of other national holiday all bets are off on some routes, I simply don't remember the last time I was unable to get from A to B on the day I wanted to go.

brunot82

laureanne, kja, temppeternh and JPDeM,

Thank you so much for your help.

We´ll start planning our itinerary based on your tips and come back with more questions. It really helped us a lot!

laurenanne

Thanks! Hopefully you could understand my itinerary since I just cut and paste from my old excel file. We did that trip in May/June two years ago.
If you go to Hong Kong, the hotel rates are rather high, but there are decent choices in AirBnb for under $200 U.S., a near impossible price to find in a hotel in a central location.

annhig

I can't help with China [but certainly appreciate the tips here should we ever get round to it] but if you want a harbour view in HK at a bargain price, try the Salisbury. Aka the YMCA it operates as a perfectly normal hotel but has the best rates anywhere for harbour view rooms, or so it seemed to us.

there are harbour view rooms later this month for about £115/night.