BootsnAll Travel Community

Assuming I can get past the increasing number of barriers to getting a visa to visit China, I'll be going in September for (hopefully) a few months. I'm not planning on having a complete itinerary before I go; just a rough idea of the provinces i would most like to visit.

It's a huge country and I would like anyone's input on how they determined their route. Did you keep your nose in the Lonely Planet? Get advice from other travelers/locals once you landed? Go on a tour?

Any success (or failure) stories are much appreciated!

It is going to be hard at that time. You will need to have some sort of itinery and accomodation booked when you apply for your visa. If at all possible I would wait til next year when things will be little less strict (i am lead to believe). If not you will just have to contact the Chinese Embassy and find out in advance exactly what they will require.

Hey Justin,

I was in China October 2007 for a few months. As for getting the Chinese Visa, it was surprisingly easy. I didn't have a set Itinerary by any means, i just listed a few places i planned on visiting, like beijing, Xi'an, Shanghai, and how long i planned on being there. Once i arrived in China my plans changed, obviously i saw all the major sites, but ended up staying in smaller towns alot of the time, sometimes felt like i was the only foreigner there, i love that feeling. I'm Canadian, so not sure if its easier for me to get a Visa, but from my personal experience, it was very straight forward. I'd be more than happy to share my experiences of this great country.

Safe Travels

Please share away! A lot of us are interested.

For those who might be hoping to go soon, you should know that the process for obtaining visas has recently become quite strict. Whereas before, as Irish notes, it was quite easy, since about mid April, it's gotten quite tough, with virtually all embassies requiring proof of return or onward travel AND documentation for all your accommodation.

As most of us know, dealing with embassies and any government office is mostly about who's working the desk that day and what kind of mood they're in. There's a sticky thread on that nameless other travel board with pages on pages of people's successes and failures in trying to get a China visa.

As for me, I'm in Wellington right now, and will try to go to the Chinese embassy next week. As of now, I have a one-way ticket to Beijing (which I purchased BEFORE the crackdown...). To make things easier for me, I probably will purchase a cheap one-way ticket out of the country to somewhere nearby (which I may end up using...who knows) and perhaps book a few nights of hostel accommodation...just enough to convince them that I really am going after the olympics.

I have been told my two agency, a russian and chinese one that you will have to get your chinese visa from your own country. this has screwed me up because i was planning to get mine from mongolia. i'll be ringing the chinese embassy in london to try and confirm this. If it wasn't for having olympic tickets and accom i would skip china off my trip.

I had a long think about this yesterday, and I probably will wait and use a visa service back home, but not until AFTER the olympics have begun. I would guess my chances will be better at that point.

Welcome to Yunnan Province. You can find many different things in this colorful ethnic area. If you want documents for room reservation in Jinghong(Xishuangbanna), let me know.

From what I understand most EU conuntries and British Commonwealth (excluding South Africa) plus the US can still get visas in Hong Kong. All African countries have been excluded it appears. I dont think it will be easy in Mongolia but it still may be possible. Things wont loosen up til the end of the paralympics -not during the Olympics. 17th October is the date being quoted byt the visa agents.
Definitely contact a visa service in your home country as things are changeable (I here 1st July they will tighten up). A Visa service company will be on first name basis with the people who process the visa and this means they know the problems before they submit for your visa and get them covered.

Anyway, back to the question at hand, how did you tackle China?

Getting back to your question which was really not about visas. A Lonely Planet book has a lot of good things in it but with the pace of things here it is out of date before it hits the sub-editor let alone being printed. Fortunately things of historic interest dont change much (earthquakes excepting) so that part is really usefull.
I would suggest that you are already going about it the right way by being on this site. If you want better details on specific parts of China then do a search on expat and the city name. then you can info from people in the area you want to go to. I can answer things about Shenzhen and Zhuhai for instance and as I travel a bit i know a little about Hangzhou but a lot of places (Shanghai, beijing, Tianjin Zhuhai etc) are getting large expat websites going so try them. I use one in Shanghai quite often to see what the views are from the other end of the country - for instance having to go out of the country every 30 days is a minor inconvenience to me as I have three nearby border crossings to Hong Kong. It would be a costly pain if i was in Shanghai. Locals will always be the best to ask.

I do some business here so i have facilities a traveller doesnt have (like access to 30 people who speak Putonghua/English) (plus a Chinese girlfriend) but when I first came here it wasnt the case. I was in a small town so it was fairly isolated but just getting out and about helped. Depending on your budget you could even hire a private tour guide for a month. I did this when my brother came over (I got a guy I new to take him to Xi'an, Beijing Shanghai etc and he did it for RMB3,000 plus food and accomodation. Do know what professionals would charge but I would investigate this as a way to at least settle in to touring around China. I usually go by myself now that I am used to it and seldom if ever encounter challenges other than being suscepitble to thaft etc which happens in any country for tourists I am affraid.

Hi!
I read a lot and wrote to a lot of people...(including on BNA)
I made contacts on the net, and spoke to people who had been there...

I'd like to suggest a little gem...
The Yangshuo Culture House
http://www.yangshuo-study-travel.com/
It's just a really amazing place...
I was there last summer. For about 11$ a night, I got a great private room with A/C and bathroom, 3 homecooked meals a day (If you want them, but thrust me, dinner is amazing...) cultural lessons of my choice, and a lot of help in organizing activities (Wei, the owner is super nice and not "pushy").
The place is now in the Lonely Planet and you really need to make a reservation if you're planning to go there.
Seriously, I strongly recommend it if you plan on going to the area...

Have a nice trip!

Hi there,
My husband and I and our friend are in China at the moment, at the end of a 12 month round the world trip. We are in our 60s and have done the trip independantly. We got our Chinese Visa in Hanoi our only problem was the holiday when the Embassy was closed, we finally just asked a local tour operator after shopping around for the best price to get it for us, hardly costs anymore money and you don't have all the hastle of waiting in line. This was in May after the new changes were in place and we didn't need to show any outbound air tickets or anything. It of course depends on your nationality and some countries may find it more difficult but as British citizens it couldn't have been easier. We had travelled to northern China in 2006 and want to not do the tourist trail so ended up travelling along the southern coastline. Checkout our website for information on the towns we visited and how we got from place to place. Contact me on the message boared if you have any questions only be too please to help.
Get registered on this website it's a good idea for keeping in touch with family and friends.
www.getjealous.com/trio
Best of luck
Jeanie

I would check out http://www.passplanet.com/China/index.htm
It's a good start though I wouldn't follow it blindly.

Its a great site with loads of suggested itineraries depending on what you want to see and how long you have, plus its been totally made by travellers.

As for my trip to China. I flew to Hong Kong last September. I was planning to travel up through shenzhen and travel west, then north before heading into Tibet. On the first day I decided to change my plans a little cause I wanted to stay in Hong Kong a little longer.

I met some people in Hong Kong who I really got on with and after a few more slight detours through Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand I found myself at the end of my holiday without even stepping foot into China and had the time of my life.

I spent 3 weeks in China last year. Basically I started knowing I wanted to visit Beijing and Lhasa. I also knew I wanted to take the new train to Lhasa. The rest of the stops I added based on research I did here and various other web sites.

What I ended up doing was flying into Beijing and visiting the sites there, then headed to Xi'an for the Terracotta warriors. Then it was off to Chengdu to see the pandas. I also found a travel agent who booked the train tickets for me and my friend to Lhasa in Chengdu. That made it a convenient stop. After Lhasa I flew to Lijiang speng a few days there. I stopped in Kunming for a day before heading back to Beijing and returning home.

I had a Lonely Planet China guide in hand which helped, but as a previous poster mentioned the pace of change in China means it's a little outdated. Nonetheless it helped to give me a general idea of how to get around.

I'm also in the preparing for China phase of which I'm leaving in a month. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the atm situation in Beijing specifically. Are they numerous? Do they take American debit cards?

How has other people dealt with money in China??

Also, Chinamonty suggested looking to expat websites for advice...does anyone have any favorites or good recommendations and links for these??

Thanks so much!

Helen

Debit cards dont seem to be a problem in big ities and sometimes even in small ones. I use my Australian Cirrus network debit card in Beijing, Baotou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and even a small place like Pingsha (which you wont find on maps I expect). Citibank has branches in China and if you check on-line some US banks have fee free withdrawals here. I also use HSBC ATMs a bit as they have dedicated ATMs for foreigners (no potential theives hang around them as they are too obvious).The only thing to make sure of is that your bank has your card linked to "savings" rather than "cheque(check) in their system. Although mine is linked to my cheque account the bank system has it as "savings" and any occassional problem I had went away totally (except of course running out of money!).
I havent got an expat site in Beijing that I go to as I seldom visit beijing except for transitting to other places but ChinaExpat comes to ming. Just do a search and have a look-if people have gone to the trouble of setting up a site it means they want to help-just like this one!

Re: Cash. I am two weeks into my RTW beginning in China and would say the ATM situation is not difficult. I have been in HK, Macao and Guandzhou so far and there are infinite hole-in-the-wall style machines everywhere (mainly Bank of China).

From the UK, I have a Natwest Credit Card (Mastercard), Nationwide Debit Card (Visa) and Natwest Debit Card (Maestro). This seems to cover me. Nationwide does not charge a fee for each cash withdrawal but I would assume they make this back through a more stingy exchange rate (any comments?). I have also taken 50 quid USD and 50 quid USD travellers cheques (though this is maybe bit conservative). I would say definitely have more than one cash card, as I lost one of mine on day 1 (not a good start).

One good thing is to buy a local mobile SIM card. My China Mobile one cost 40 yuan (c3 quid) (incl 50 yuan of calls), and gives me <1p per min in your local province, c2p per min to other all other provinces, and best of all c15p per min to the UK! I would however double-check these as my negotiations were done using translation software!

Re: Visas. This may be obvious but try to leave any mention of Tibet (also Xinjiang in the NW) off your visa application form (Lonely Planet advice). They also do not do multi-entry six month visas, so the best I could get was a double-entry one-month-at-a-time visa.

Lonely Planet's site guides are good, food suggestions very variable, and transport suggestions good but sometimes a bit dated.

Difficult things are the lack of language on my part (especially for booking bus / train tickets) and the lack of travellers where I've been so far. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to tackle these issues?

If anyone is in SE China in the next three weeks give me a shout (heading to Fuzhou on Sunday).

Mike

Thanks for all the great tips on money for China!! Definitely helped! Some other friends have also told me to check out atm fees that my banks here will charge. This was also good advice because I discovered Bank of America charges $5 for withdrawing money at foreign atms which could add up fast over the course of 3 months!

RE: Mike

"Difficult things are the lack of language on my part (especially for booking bus / train tickets) and the lack of travellers where I've been so far. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to tackle these issues?"

For language issues, I'm bringing over the Lonely Planet Mandarin pocket guide which encourages its use for conversations, even if its pointing to phrases in the book to get across what you need. That's my backup plan while I'm there along with seeking out younger people who may be more likely to speak English.

And to find travelers, check out www.couchsurfing.com. It's a great community of travelers and when you log-in you can see people that are logged in near you. I've already joined the Beijing group and can see that they get together for meet-ups, outings and other travelers have posted Qs there too.

I'll be Shanghai July 2...where else are you going to go while in China? Enjoy the rest of your time in the Far East!!