we will be staying in Hong Kong for 5 days in March- can anyone recommend a low to mid range hotel in a good location. Should we book the train to Beijing before leaving home(canada) or wait till we are in hong kong? Also we would like to do a yantze river cruise while we are in shanghai. Are there many tours from there and can they be easily booked.

For discussion of the train to Beijing see a couple of topics not far below, including:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34469720

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

What do you consider low to mid range and how do you define a good location?

There is a wide variety of options at vastly different price ranges and some hotels are more western others more Asian. Typically the more western the higher the costs but then again the rooms tend to be larger, etc.

In terms of locations, if you are worried about safe neighborhoods, HK is very safe in general. If you mean more centrally located, HK has great public transportation that is user friendly and it's easy to get around. What do you want to be close to?

we used wotif.com.au to book our accom before train to Shanghai. check rates on their website for comparisions. we stayed at Regal Kowloon-nice 3 star down near harbour, not anything special though for around AUD 140. miramar hotel was in a better location on cnr of Nathan Rd saw it when we passed by. priceline.com.(hk or sg) we got harbourplaza, Hung Hom (AUD160)a short bus ride to city but right on the harbour with the most amazing rooftop pool looking over HK harbour and 5 mins walk to ferry to Causeway bay. Hung Hom stn is short taxi ride from city-you can book sleeper when you arrive. We got seriously ripped off by using tiglion Travel in HK-paid too much. chinatravel1.com are good for train and air tickets as Peter N suggests on this board. We used them for hotel in Shanghai and they were about 10% cheaper than hotel direct. Have a great trip.

I'd just like to clarify the recommendation of chinatravelone (CTS HK). It's a convenient way to buy rail tickets because the proper price is charged and commission paid by the railway, not the customer. But for all other services CTS HK charges too much, and if a 10% discount is available off a hotel's published price that's considerably less deep than is available at the hotel itself, by bargaining over the counter. Better visa, air, hotel, and tour prices are available from other Hong Kong agents, best dealt with in person. Booking services from Hong Kong over Web sites is otherwise almost always a bad idea, and sometimes a very bad idea indeed.

Peter N-H
http://members.axion.net/~pnh/China.html

Hi Peter- I found chinatravel1 much cheaper for the Sofitel Hyland in Shanghai than we could find anywhere including lastminute sites in Australia. Accom is something I didn't worry about booking but trains were a different story.