sioFont

Thank you very much.
As I said earlier, your help is invaluable and I'm sure that my trip will be better and smoother thanks to your comments. If there is anything I could do for you, please tell me.

Returning to the itinerary, I will do Hangzhou-Huangshan by bus, taking precautions about the bus route.
I will distribute the Guilin days as jiejie suggests, but maybe I will try to go to Yangshuo by boat. For the worst, sometimes I'm very mainstream.

About laundromats, I'm used to do a light laundry in hotel rooms. But it is useful specially for washing and drying cotton clothes. Maybe I can wait to get to Beijing and use Laundrytown.

I understand moondog comments about avoiding extra fees when buying tickets. But if I wait to getting to Shanghai and going to a ticketing office, maybe I can't find the trains I need. It's 12 days before the Beijing-Pingyao. And I don't have a lot of leeway.

Using Ctrip or 12306.cn (maybe I can find some help here in BCN for reading in Chinese; but seat61.com says it doesn't accept foreign credit cards), can I have e-tickets or is it always needed to go to a ticket office in China?

谢谢

jiejie

You cannot use official site 12306.cn unless you register and have a China-issued bank card. No foreign cards accepted on that site.

I can just about 100% guarantee that if you wait until you arrive in China to try to purchase tickets in and out of Pingyao, you will find them sold out in October. These tickets can get snapped up within a week or so after the 60-day sales period begins. In fact, you may have trouble buying anything out of Pingyao and will have to purchase Taiyuan-Xian then just get on further down the line at Pingyao.

When you consider the overall scope of your China trip spending, paying a reputable agent a commission of RMB 80 for two train tickets shouldn't even be a concern. If that's what it takes to ensure you can keep your schedule, and take away some of the stress of the unknown, seems to me a no-brainer to do it. Ctrip you can get away a bit cheaper but customer service may not be at the same level. The other short-range tickets in Jiangsu/Zhejiang, as I already indicated, do not need much if any advance purchase, and you can do those yourself.

sioFont

jiejie, I was trying to know if what moondog said was a viable option for me. I try to avoid extra fees when possible, but in this case it seems fair to me paying them if this makes things easier.

jiejie

It's really up to you as to how much you want to gamble on this. If you decide to wait until you arrive in China to purchase, then you need a backup plan B in case tickets are sold out. The only reasonable plan B to Pingyao would be buying a plane ticket Beijing-Taiyuan and then going by road or short-rail the rest of the way to Pingyao....but this is going to take a lot more time, have the annoyance of a transfer in Taiyuan, and likely will end up more expensive than paying regular HSR train fare + a small ticket commission. Ditto for Pingyao-Taiyuan-Xian. Or you could make an 11th hour decision once in China to skip Pingyao if you can't get there by train, and just fly nonstop Beijing-Xi'an which should always be available within 12 days in mid/late October. That would be a shame, though.

sioFont

I'm sorry because I know I don't communicate well in English.
I was just trying to understand if there was something beneficial for my trip (in that case, a potential money saving) in moondog post.
But at the same time, keeping in mind all your earlier posts, I wanted to say that I prefer not to take risks with this and that it's absolutely ok for me paying an extra fee for using a reliable intermediary retailer and avoiding surprises.

That said, I want to follow this schedule, but it's possible and even probable that I miss some connection or take a wrong bus or train during the trip. So, it's good to hear about alternatives!

tauphi

I haven't tried this myself but 12306 supports Alipay and Alipay can handle international cards.

jiejie

Let's think about this, in the context of the OP and his thread: by all accounts, Alipay is not the easiest thing for a foreigner to get set up with. Does it really make sense to go to this kind of trouble just to be able to get a couple of train tickets directly from 12306.cn......vs just putting an order in with an agent who charges RMB 40 x 2 = RMB 80 for 2 critical train tickets, using one's own credit card, and being done with it at one fell swoop? Especially when it's not clear the OP would ever need to deal with 12306.cn (or Alipay) again?

Is the OP's time and convenience and certainty of having transport on schedule worth RMB 80, USD 13 (or whatever Euro equivalent is today)? Because that's really what we're all dancing around here.

CrazyInteg

not trying to thread hijack...seemed like a good thread to ask my question....

If somebody were going to be in Beijing around Nov 1st, what is the weather like? I'm assuming jeans/pants (no shorts), long sleeve shirt and a light jacket?

moondog

Google is a better resource than ft for questions of this nature, but my two cents are that November weather in Beijing is generally pretty nice. In fact, I would wear shorts if doing anything strenuous.

CrazyInteg

Thanks. Last time I was in Beijing it was mid-December and there was snow on the ground. So I wasn't sure how November would be.

sioFont

Hi again,
I'm now actively planning my trip and I've started to book trains and hotels.

If possible, I'd like to ask you some new questions.

Bookings.
I'm using China DIY to book trains, so this is solved.

Regarding to flights:
--Where? Between Ctrip or Elong, is these any significant difference?
Prices there are cheaper in the 1st screen that the ones I find in the airline website? So, are there hidden processing charges?

--it's too early to book flights? First flight is on Nov 1st.
Prices for a Xian-Guilin are between €90-€100 ($100-$115 or 650-750 yuans) Is this ok? Maybe wait?

Hotels.
The same as for the flights. Is any website more convenient? I always tend to use the official hotel or chain website. But sometimes I find it's only in Chinese.

Visiting Xian.
Depending on the flight, I'll have 0,5 days (arriving around 12.30pm from Pingyao) + 1 full + 0,5 days (late afternoon flight) or 0,5 + 1 + 1 (leaving next morning).
Must I assume a full day for visiting the Army?
Lonely Planet encourages the visit to the tomb of Emperor Jingdi. Viable in half a day?

Thank you very much!

jiejie

Normally it's a bit early to book flights for Nov 1, but Xi'an-Guilin for between RMB 600-700 is a very good price (like a China Eastern early bird special), so I'd go ahead and take it, with the understanding that the flight schedule may be subject to change between now and then. Either ctrip or elong is OK to use, and both have a small surcharge if you use a foreign credit card. On the purchase page once you select a fare, you should see that it includes an RMB 50 tax (required by law) and in ctrip's case, an RMB 40 charge for insurance--that one you can opt out of by dialing the selector down to "0" to eliminate it. Make sure you read the fine print on booking terms--the cheaper the fare, the more the restrictions on refundability and changeability.

I prefer elong.com for hotels over ctrip, and in the past year ctrip has had many complaints about problem cancellations, being charged immediately instead of pay at hotel....they have apparently outsourced a lot of the hotel bookings to a third party and it's causing issues. For major hotels, you can use the usual suspects like expedia, booking.com, hotels.com, agoda, etc. For smaller places such as guesthouses, I'd tend to try to book directly with them as you can usually get just as good a rate vs through a third party agent.

Your Xi'an time is fine. The Warriors only need 1 hour each way to get to/from central Xi'an, then between 2-3 hours on-site. Definitely not a full day visit. You could even do them on the afternoon that you arrive--sometimes they are less crowded towards the latter part of the afternoon. Emperor Jingdi tomb (Hanyangling) is close to the airport and is often visited on the way to or from it, if you engage a private driver. From central Xi'an, takes about 45 minutes to get there. You need up to 1.5 hours on site but can push faster if you must.

sioFont

Thank you, jiejie!

So, I will go ahead with flights and hotels bookings.

One more thing, I forgot yesterday. It's about Chinese economic hotel chains.
One guidebook talks about Motel 168, Jinjiang Inn, Home Inn and 7 Days Inn.

My first idea of accommodation is a quiet room, neither very expensive nor very big. And non-smoking! (I have read a lot of a Tripadvisor comments about non-smoking rooms that smell)

I have some experience in Japan with business hotels as Toyoko Inn and in Europe with chains as Ibis. (In USA, I stayed at Holiday inn express and Fairfield Inn, but I think these are a bit above a business hotel)

So, do you have comments about these chains? Some are better bets than others?
Is smoking and smell a problem in hotels? (I'm not anti tobacco, but in that context, I always prefer a room that smells fine)

Thank you!

moondog

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...el-thread.html

sioFont

Thank you!
And sorry! I stopped at page 10 of forum threads (the ones of 2015).

I understand that if a hotel appears in elong or ctrip results, it accepts foreigners. Is this true?