Shanghai Visit
 

Hello Everyone, I really enjoy reading all the tips and helpful advice on this forum.

My family and I will be visiting Shanghai for a few weeks in December and January. I would love some thoughts on the following:

1. What are some good day trips from Shanghai?

2. What is a reasonable rate to hire a car and driver for a day in Shanghai?

3. Any recommendations for good local family restaruants would be appreciated.

Thanks you so much, Alex

1. Xitang is one option

2. I believe I paid 1000 RMB for a day trip to Xitang. I am sure you can get much better prices than I did, as I did this through a staff member at my hotel. I would recommend the driver I used very highly; talk to him about prices yourself:


Zhong Wei Ren

139-019-10833

Please let us know if you were able to contact him; I want to make certain that the contact information is correct.

Thank you, will check out Xitang. Will also let you know if the contact info is still current.

Would love more suggestions.

Alex

We just visited Suzhou and Zhouzhang and I highly recommend Zhouzhang-it was charming and atomspheric even with the tourists there whereas Suzhou's gardens might be beautiful if you could get them to yourselves but it is overrun with visitors. We each paid about $200 for the full-day, two towns, and a driver and guide-this was booked thru our hotel.

Do you mean that you paid a total of $400 for a day trip?

Yes, which was exp. but we did get a guide and a driver and it inc. lunch and all admissions.

Thanks for the suggestions, is $200 a day a fair price for a car and driver?

Just returned 2 days ago & I highly recommend not to tour by car but use the very cheap (approx 60 cents per ride), clean & efficient subway system.All names & directions are in English.The traffic on the streets will set you back from valuable touring time if you see Shanghai by car.Taxis are a better option than hiring a car + driver because they're so inexpensive as well.A $15 cab ride at home cost us $3.I highly recommend our private guide, Lee, who speaks an excellent English, is very intelligent & has a great personality to boot.He charged us $10 U.S. an hour for our group of 6.He can be reached at [email protected]. Shanghai was definitely a highlite of our trip.

I paid the driver 1000 RMB for the day's trip to Xitang which is about $140US.

I am quite sure that I could have gotten a better price, because I found this driver through one of the front desk guys at my hotel. Note that I asked several people at the front desk; a couple of them referred me to an "official" travel agency that had a book listing set tours and prices. The price for Xitang was about $230US. I asked someone else if he knew any drivers and he phoned Mr. Zhong, who gave him the1000 RMB price for me.

Whether or not a tour includes lunch is kind of irrelevant because you can eat for very little in a local place. When the driver suggested I take an hour for lunch at one of the restaurants in the Old Town of Xitang, I told him that I would rather eat in a local place (one not oriented towards tourists). So he took me to the place that he was planning to eat and actually bought me lunch. (He ordered for me, menu was in Chinese only and xlb (soup dumplings) and fried dumplings were featured)

It was fabulous, and probably cost the equivalent of $3US or thereabouts.

Motto here is to ask around...you can even hire a taxi for the day...

Here is more info, from my report:


http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34984181