Several Questions
 

I am flying to Qingdao for a fair and shall be staying there for a few days.

This is my first trip to China so I need advice on several matters:

How to find a decent/reasonable hotel in Qingdao?

How to find/reserve reasonable rental Car?

Dont have a GSM phone that I can take to China. What is the alternative since I want to be able to use cell phone there?

Need to travel from Qingdao to Guangzhou and Shanghai. Any websites where I can book the tickets in advance?

Need to find reasonable hotel in Guangzhou ... any suggestion?

I know i've asked lots of questions .. but any help is appreciated!

Welcome

Give us idea of your budget for hotels, requirements so we can help.

GSM - go to eBay, pick up triband, UNLOCKED phone, upon arrival, buy China Mobile sim/account, around RMB120, call to your heart's content (do search on this and you'll see prior discussions on this thread).

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...ighlight=china

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...ighlight=china

Thanks guys.

I have one local contact in Qingdao and he was saying he can arrange a 3 star for 180 RMB a day and it includes internet access. Dont know if I can find a better hotel for that price or lower. As I am not familiar with the city, I will have to rely on his choice and judgement for the location.
I want to be able to attend the Fair in Qingdao International Convention Center and meet few businesses in the city on later dates.

My contact person will arrange for the car (i'll be paying) but he will drive. We have to visit different places in the city and outside the city so I think car might be the only good option.



I have a Nokia 6103 with Tmobile. I will ask them to help unlock it. The bands supported are 850, 1800, 1900. I want to be able to send SMS and ofcourse place calls.


The ticket prices from Qingdao to Guangzhou are kind of high. 1800 RMB to 2000 RMB. Not sure if these are the standard rates in China. If I cannot find lower rates I will have to drop the visit to Guangzhou. I already checked elong.com
Also the hotel rates I'm getting for Guangzhou are kinda scary!



But from Qingdao to Shanghai is around RMB 350 which is decent.

Ideally, I wanted to stay in Qingdao for a week. Make a round trip to Guangzhou for two days within that week and than get a one way from Qingdao to Shanghai. But with the high rates to Guangzhou it is looking very difficult.


Any subway(restaurant) in China?

Yes, in fact we met the master franchise holders last week at a conference; they are expanding rapidly. On the whole, the quality is notch or two down from the US standard, but definitely works in a pinch. There is also at least one in Beijing Airport, which has dramatically improved my travel experience.

Your phone should work in China if you get unlocked, but you still might want to consider buying one locally if you care about Chinese language support.

As for the hotel, I suggest you try to figure out its location before making a final decision because Qingdao is a big place.

Based on those fares, it sounds like you might be trying to go to Guangzhou during the fair. If so, be prepared to spend a lot more money than you otherwise would.

Mr Zhu much prefers www.ctrip.com (and so does Wall Street!!!)

IIRC, there are at least 2 Subway sandwich restaurants in Shanghai. One is located at 550 East YanAn Road, can't remember the location for the other one.

Can you confirm if there is one in Qingdao?

Yes for Guangzhou (Canton fair) prices are miserably high for iairfare and hotel stay. I might just drop the idea for that reason.

I dont speak chinese so a sms/text in english phone would work for me.

subway.com

Get a HepB shot before you go. Qinqdao is big on oysters and other seafood and fish and that's what your hosts/partners will want you to eat. Good Korean options also as there is a massive company presence from the land of the morning calm.

I'm not sure if there is any Subway in Qingdao, However, the Chinese name for Subway is 赛百味. Maybe you can show it to your local host.

I think you mean HepA; HepB is generally only transmitted through close physical contact. I've given up on oysters entirely; learned my lesson after 6 bad experiences.... 24 hour delay, then 24 hours during which you'll wish you were dead.

I actually looked at subway.com before I posted the link. I didn't reveal the results of my "research" because I figured the OP might derive satisfaction out of trying out the store locator himself. But, lest anyone else cares, they're do not appear to be any Subways in QD at this moment in time... could always grab a boat to Dalian, I suppose.

As long as I'm here, I'd like to revisit the cell phone topic for a second. Even those that don't speak Chinese should still recognise that Chinese language support is a useful feature when you're in China (or Taiwan/HK/SIN). Let's say you're trying to meet someone at an obscure restaurant or bar; showing the cabbie an SMS goes a lot further than simply repeatedly shouting out "Friday's". My boss used to do the latter on a regular basis and it was quite embarrassing for the rest of us.

Finally, a few comments on the Canton Fair. Sure it's expensive, but every time I've gone, the investment ($1000 for 2-3 days) has paid off in spades. I can think of lots of trade shows in America that cost much more (CES comes to mind) and provide less value. That said, if you don't have a solid game plan, you might not get a lot out of it.

Thanks for the comments.

Regarding phone issue, I have a few contacts in China that speak English, worst case scenario.. when I'm travelling by myself, I'll call one of them and have them talk to the cabblie or shop owner etc etc.


Regarding Canton, It would be first trip there so It would a good exposure if nothing else. I have some good plans for Qingdao area but nothing concrete to target anyone at Canton Fair.

That said, I went on to ctrip, as someone suggested and I can see some 3+ star hotels between RMB 500 to RMB 800 which looks okay. Except some of them dont even have internet access and I dont know how far these are from the Canton Fair. For air travel, lowest I can find is RMB 1250 one way to Quangdon and another 1250 RMB for return.

The Canton Fair is a big deal, and prices of hotel go much higher than non-fair times, not just in Guangzhou but even as far as Hong Kong.

Oops, good note.

I've only gone down once so far, albeit in Qinqdao. :D The Chinese immune system doesn't seem fully resistant either as my colleague shared the same fate on that trip.

But the customers wanted to drink and dine with us the same evening so a lenghty nap was all I got.

Woud the shot be effective if I get it couple of days before the trip. And I dont plan on eating oysters at all. Maybe some fish and shrimp.

The shot is meaningless with respect to my personal allergy. I think the ability to ward off the types of bacteria that are common in rawshellfish varies from person to person. In my case, the threshold is low and is dropping further as I get older. So, while it's likely that I'd be fine at Legal Seafoods or McKormick & Shmick's, I don't roll the dice at all.

However, I'm fine with all types of cooked seafood, including shellfish and non-shellfish sushi. That said, I don't do the all-you-eat sushi places in SH too much any more, not due so much to health concerns, but because the quality (particularly the uni; yuck!) isn't all that stellar.

The ones i saw on CTRIP for 500-800 are near the New Airport, or in other obscure places. Don't bother with these places - paying an extra RMB200-300 more is worth your sanity - especially if this is your first CECF 'experience'...

Hong Kong convention center and the new HK Airport convention center
run trade shows at same time as Canton Fair , so the whole HK GZ is
jacked up on hotel prices.

Someone suggested that I should stay in Shenzhen which is 1 hour train ride from Guangzhou. Hotel rates around RMB 350.

But this seems like a bigger hassle.

Yes

Dongguan - Beverly Hills
 

I have had many Taiwanese tell me that Dongguan is like the Beverly Hills of China. I don't know what to make of this. But maybe research Dongguan instead of Shenzhen, they are not far apart. Is there a large Persian population in Dongguan now as Beverly Hills is including Farsi in the election ballot?

Hmm...not quite the Beverly Hills of China..but i can understand where they are coming from. Some very nice resorts and properties in some places.

Are your Taiwanese friends in the furniture business by any chance?

There are Arab/Indian sub-continent business people all over S.C. - I'm not sure what you mean by the election ballot though....

Anyways, even for the fair, Dongguan is still a pain in the a$$. I would stay as close to the fair as possible, get in bang at 9am and leave at 6pm sharp...better to spend two complete days there (i.e. one night in an expensive hotel) rather than several days of commuting back and forth from a cheap but obscure hotel in the middle of Dongguan.

Remember...time is money!

Are your Taiwanese friends in the furniture business by any chance?
Not Furniture business, factories for producing general merchandise.

I'm not sure what you mean by the election ballot though....
Large population of Iranians now in Beverly Hills, so the election ballot has
Farsi as well as English.

would stay as close to the fair as possible, get in bang at 9am and leave at 6pm sharp...better to spend two complete days there (i.e. one night in an expensive hotel)

That sounds like the best idea. Maybe the new Shangrila in Guangzhou...its probably upward of $350 a night during fair time.

We used to stay in a serviced apartment there that was big, nice, convenient, and less than $100 per night during fair time. The name escapes me, but I could dig it up if anyone expresses interest.

Yes I would appreciate that along with their phone #

Found a 4.5 star 25 minutes from fair with free hotel shuttle service to the canton fair. RMB 625. Not bad under the circumstances.

625 RMB is a good price. Everytime I have gone to the fair I have ended up staying in a total dump. Last October session I paid 1500 RMB for a room that looked like skid row. Haven't been able to find anything decent and don't want to pay over $300 per night. Guangzhou, not my favorite destination in China. Will skip Canton fair from now on and just go to the HK shows.

I think you might have stayed at Nuova Plaza Apartments in Tianhe - right next to the bridge that goes over to Pazhou? Is that the place?

We put some of our staff from other offices over there, and it's around RMB900-1500 for a 3/br apartment during the fair times. Best to call them for better rates though.