PTravel

My wife (who is from China) and I will be returning to China around Christmas this year. Our finances remain tight, so we're looking to keep the trip as inexpensive as possible.

We'll be flying in to Beijing, where I have some business to transact. From there we'll fly to Shenzhen and stay with my brother-in-law for a few days. We're planning to fly from Hong Kong to Angkor Wat. My wife has a few destinations within China picked out which I can't recall at the moment -- however, she's always right in her recommendations. We're looking to spend 2 to 3 weeks overseas. We need to return from a destination serviced by Northwest for our return to SFO (we've got a couple of thousand dollars credit with them for some tickets we didn't use last year).

I suggested a visit to Vietnam, but my wife has no interest in going. I also suggested Mumbai (we've been in northwestern India and enjoyed it very much), but my wife thinks the hotels in India will cost too much (in Asia, we need what passes as 4-star -- at least in Delhi, the nicer hotels were as pricey as Europe). We'd both love to make a stopover in Tokyo (very easy to do on Northwest), but economics preclude that, absent a huge drop in the Yen.

I'm a little more accepting of "rough travel" than my wife. We don't mind train rides, prefer to fly, but need a clean hotel room with the bathroom en suite.

We've been to China (mostly Shenzhen and Canton) and Hong Kong many, many times. We're ancient culture, museums and old buildings kind of people. We're definately NOT sit on the beach in the sun types. We've been to Bangkok before, but would rather go somewhere new.

At least at this point, we won't go to any predominantly-Muslim countries, or any countries where there has been significant terrorism directed against tourists (this isn't open to debate -- if you disagree with me, you can go, but we won't ).

Thanks for any suggestions.

christep

Isn't your post rather inconsistent, given that a Canadian kid was just murdered by a group of gunmen in the international school near Angkor Wat?

PTravel

Well, no. The gunmen were desparately poor and had hatched a crazy scheme to hold kids of rich foreigners hostage for ransom. The kid who was killed was shot, not to show the seriousness of their ransom demands, but because the kid's crying irritated one of the lunatics. They were not looking to achieve political ends through terror.

However, as I indicated, I'm really not interested in debating _why_ I won't go certain places. If you want to start another thread about where people will or will not go, I'll be happy to post there. Here, however, I'm just looking for destination suggestions.