It's your
call whether or not you want to take advantage of the advice I offer from
my China experience. But if you follow this advice, you can save
money on calling, travel cheaply, read fun suggestions, find cool travel
toys, and find some of the cheapest airfares around. I also have a
lot of cool photos which I took, so check those out too if you want to see
some great
pictures of China!
This advice page is put up based upon my own travel experience to
China. My hope is that through the tips,
suggestions and web sites offered here, your own travel to
China experience will be made easier. There is advice for
calling China cheaply (and calling America cheaply from China), the
best travel deals to cities like Beijing and Shanghai, traveling on
planes, places to travel to within China, and other suggestions. If you do take these
suggestions to heart and they help you out, please email me
[email protected] to share your story. If
you have advice for people traveling to China, also
email me. My plan
is to put a page up of other people's travel to China stories, in
addition to my own China experience, and that way there will be a
lot of information here, making everyone's travel experiences easier
and even more enjoyable!
Travel
Advice subject headings - click to view, or just scroll the
page.
As you can see in many of my pictures, the weather
in Beijing and Shanghai while we were there in late June
was mostly foggy. We were glad for this. The weather in
China could have
been very hot and humid had the sun been out while we were
there. It was a bit muggy as it was, but nothing like it could
have been.
Be prepared for rainy and stormy weather however. (An umbrella is a good idea.) On the way to China,
we were delayed in Los Angeles for 9 hours, waiting in the airport,
because of "waether". A typhoon had prevented our plane from leaving
Shanghai. Leaving China to get back home, our plane was delayed by over six
hours, again because of a typhoon. We were glad the typhoon
happened the day of our departure though, as opposed to during our
stay in China. When a typhoon hits, highly recommended is
staying indoors. It gets very windy and very rainy.
Imagine yourself climbing over 1,000 steps to the top tower of
the most difficult climb on the Great Wall of China. It's an
incredible day, just like you imagined it would be before coming to
China. The further up you go, the more immersed in
the fog you become, the more still the air becomes, the
fewer people there are because the climb is long and
difficult. But you've made it, and as you reach the seventh
tower, you feel a sense of accomplishment and inspiration for the
future. It's wonderful and exhilarating: your heart is
pounding and you realize how fortunate you are to be alive!
Avoid the bulkhead seats on older planes at
all costs. 16 hours from Los Angeles to Shanghai on a
plane with virtually no leg room (ie. knees bent at 90 degrees with
toes touching the wall in front of you) is far too
long.
Finding good rates on airfare, hotels, car rentals, tour guides,
etc. can save you money for all that bargaining you're going to be
doing in China. (BARGAIN, BARGAIN, BARGAIN on everything you
buy!!!) Here are some sites which will save you money on
Travel expenses.
Some of our luggage was lost, one piece was lost twice
-- once in Los Angeles (when we flew from Denver to LAX) and again
in Beijing (when we flew from Shanghai to Beijing). I can not
stress enough the importance of having your name securely posted
somewhere visible on your luggage so that it can find its way
back to you if it happens to get lost.
Cheap phone calls and
CALLING ADVICE for calls to China from
the U.S., and calls to the U.S. from China.
You may
need to call China to:
make reservations
confirm hotels
talk to friends you met on the Internet
Take a calling card with you. It can:
save you time trying to figure out how, where, and what
calling card to buy
save you money by giving you cheap rates on long
distance charges
tell you how much you're paying in advance
help you out if you get in a jam and need a
cheap calling card rather than an expensive one.
Check out one of the links below for help with
calling to and from China
If, however, you should
end up in China and don't have a calling card with you, and need to make a phone call home, you can get two kinds of
international calling cards from China
Telecom. Most street vendors (drink and fruit shops) in the
bigger cities seemed to sell both the IP and the IC cards.
IC cards go directly into the slots on the phones in china, while IP
cards have a PIN number on the back. The IC, generally
speaking, is easier to use, while the IP gives you more minutes for
your money. So take your pick...
If you need to know how
to ask for a calling card, you could try this Chinese phrase "Woah
yaow my IP" ("I want buy IP"--and say IP, as in "eye pea").
You might take out a credit card and point at a phone or make a
phone gesture, so that the person has an idea of what you are
talking about. The IP and IC cards usually come in denominations of 30, 50,
and 100 yuan (about US $4.00, $6.50, and $12.50)
The IP Card
The IP card is more
difficult to use because you have to dial so many numbers and you
get charged for a local call in addition to a long distance call...
In other words, you can't use a pay phone to use the IP card unless
you can deposit money into the phone. You have to have a phone
where it can be billed as a local call.
The IC Card
The IC card is relatively hassle free, but you don't get a lot of
time for your money.
But just remember that
the International calling code to reach the U.S. is 001, not 1.
So you dial 001 + area code + number (plus any PIN number and other
numbers that your calling card requires).
If you have a cell phone, take it for travel
within the U.S. With all of our delays and other difficulties
in getting to China and coming home from China,
we needed to call family to let them know what was going on.
We spent a lot more money at pay phones in airports and hotels than
we should have, simply because we had decided to leave our cell
phones at home. We figured that since we were traveling to
China, we wouldn't need them. We should have said TRAVELING to
China, not traveling to CHINA. Then we would have taken at
least one cell phone. Anyway, don't make the same mistake we
did.
If you have a cell phone, take
it with you, just in case!
Magellan's has sooooo MANY
GREAT TOYS FOR TRAVEL! The one that you
NEED TO HAVE based on my experience is a voltage
converter and adaptor plug set. I was in three
different cities during my time in China, and in three
different hotels. During that time, I used three different types of adaptor
plugs. Check out what else Magellan's has to offer,
but don't go to China without taking some type
of voltage converter/adaptor kit. (Assuming you
want your electrical stuff to work, that is.)
