Happy New Year travellers.
It's 2014 and time for the next chapter in your travelling lives. Where to next? Revisit somewhere? Try something new? Can't decide? Well, if you've ever thought about China, the next ream of blogs may just give you that nudge in the right direction.
November 2013 was our flight to Beijing and our second trip to Asia (2011, Japan). This years blogs will detail not only what we have done but hidden gems and places tourists don't usually venture to. Hopefully I'll shine a light on some things you don't already know about China and I'll be giving survival guides to each of the cities we visited as well as to transport and facilities.
Our trip may have begun on the 1st November but the journey to China started many months before...........
Before You Go
China is not a country you just book and go to. It takes research and planning and there are certain hoops that you must jump through before you can take the trip, not least of all the Visa, but I will come back to that.
Now, I flew from London, UK and am a UK citizen but I will try as best I can to provide information relevant to as many countries as I can, or specific details for countries not experiencing the same rules as the UK.
So the first things you are going to need are possible dates and some money for tickets. Purchase your air travel well in advance - if you can - as they can be ridiculously cheap for the distance you are travelling. We booked in January for November and got tickets to Beijing and back from Shanghai for £500 return. Bargain! Yes it was a long time to wait but at least we knew our flights were booked and it gave us loads of time to plan and research and save for spends and accommodation.
As for dates; we were originally going to travel in October but found there were a significant amount of Chinese holidays at this time and it would have been pointless as attractions and tourist sites would have been closed or on reduced hours, due to every Chinese person being on holiday. It is better to travel outside of these dates to ensure you get the full experience. For details on 2014, 2015 and 2016 dates check out:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/calendar.htm There are significant spring holidays too and if you can I would probably avoid travelling in the height of Summer, due to not only excessive heat but also the smog which could put a sweaty, oppressive dampener on your holiday. Granted I have never travelled at any other time in China but November was great in terms of being between 20 and 5 degrees centigrade and mostly sunny. There was barely any rain and a few really hot days.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/when-to-come.htm This page gives you more information on the best times to travel to China.
So moving on, we were lucky enough to book our very cheap flights with Turkish airlines, which incidentally were voted the best airline in Europe for about four years in a row and are freakin' awesome! http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-cn/ They fly from a number of countries and cities with Istanbul as a major hub and changing point. Obviously look around for the best deal at the time, for you. Websites such as: http://www.opodo.com/ and http://www.expedia.co.uk are fantastic for comparing prices of airlines and offer special deals. There is also an expedia site for the US www.expedia.com Check out other airline sites as well, as they often have sales or special offers. And if you want to fly direct, Air China offer flights to and from thirty countries around the world. http://www.airchina.com/ But if you want to do something like, come back from a different airport, or change in a particular place, then the comparison style sites seem much easier to do that from.
Okay, enough about flights. So you've booked them, you've got your dates, you're excited and starting to research and what you are most likely to discover is that you need a visa to visit.http://www.visamapper.com/ This
is a fabulous site where you add your nationality and it maps all the
places in the world that you would need to buy a visa to travel to, and
those which you don't. Very cool. Now depending on where you hail from there are various different ways of filling out the forms and getting the whole process moving. Some countries are able to compile the form online, whereas others you have to contact the Chinese embassy within your country and it can also be done by postal service.
The fees of the visa vary from country to country, for instance, my partner in travel and life paid less than me because he's an Italian passport holder. The fees can also depend on the country you are making the application from. And some countries have to make an application but actually don't pay for it, though these are few: Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Herzegovina, Maldives, Micronesia, Pakistan and Slovakia.
This process definitely needs research on your part but there are few useful websites that I will link below that not only cover UK and US regulations but also Australia, most of Western Europe and a few Asian countries.
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/visas/ For US visa applications.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa.htm For general visa application queries and information.
http://www.visaforchina.org Now this is the one you will use if applying for your visa in the UK. But you can change the site and language as it covers 15 Countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, UK.
I must clarify here that these visas only cover entrance into the People's Republic of China (PRC). If you wish to travel to Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan then you must obtain a double or multiple entrance visa, as even a day trip to Hong Kong would constitute leaving the PRC and you wouldn't be able to re-enter until you had sorted out the relevant visa. Now here's where US citizenship comes in handy, as if you are coming from the US your fee is the same whether purchasing a single entry, double entry or multiple entry visa; which gives you that flexibility to explore a bit further. Everyone else would have to pay more for double or multiple.
We went for the single entrance as we only had 16 days to do as much as we could over there and whilst Hong Kong would have been amazing, you not only need an additional entry to China in order to get back in, but you need to apply for a visa for Hong Kong too.
The visa can seem like a daunting task but there are guides to filling it in online - if of course that is an option for you. They do want quite a lot of information from you, like where you are staying and what you do for a living and what your parents do. If you are moving around in China then they need to know all your accommodations. It is particularly thorough but you only have to get your visa a month in advance of you going and it only takes them about five working days to process it.
For the fifteen countries mentioned along with the UK, you fill in the form online http://www.visaforchina.org/
which is the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre (CVASC) and then within your country there will be at least one, sometimes four or five centres where you can travel to for the actual visa interview. Obviously this could be slightly annoying if you don't live near any of the centres, in which case they do offer a postal service, which takes a little longer and costs more, but if you are lucky enough to be in travelling distance of a CVASC then once you have checked your application a million times, or maybe three or four, just to be on the safe side, you print it all out and make an appointment time for your centre.
Just want to interject here that if you are single or in a relationship but not married each of you has to do a separate visa form. If you a married you do one between you. And here is me presuming that you are travelling with someone. Of course you may not be and you are a braver traveller than me.
Now when you have made your appointment, and if using the London branch I would advise an early one, because it gets really busy and there are lots of appointments scheduled at the same time. When you arrive you are given a number and must wait. When you receive your confirmation of your appointment, please check the date as my partner presumed it was the following Monday. We went for 9am and then it was actually the week after. Wasted journey. You also need to have a photocopy of your passport with you. This wasn't clear to us online - it may have been updated since - but it was on signs in the CVASC. If you forget, don't worry there are photocopying facilities downstairs in the London branch but I can't speak for other centres. So a quick photocopy before you leave would just make things a whole lot easier and smoother for you.
Please, please, please make sure you don't need to travel anywhere within at least a week as they will take your passport, along with your application form and details of your accommodation. We were taking some internal flights too but they didn't seem too interested in those details. Once they have conducted the interview they give you a slip with a date to return for your passport and hopefully - fingers crossed - your accepted visa. Of course this only makes sense if you live within travelling distance as you have to make at least two trips, three if you mess up the date of the interview.
Then you pay for the visa when you pick it up, and unfortunately even if they reject the application, you still have to pay. You can pay card or cash, though cash payments have been withdrawn for US citizens. The visa will appear as a paper addition to your passport on one of the pages and will state the date issued, the date it expires and how long it is for. Visas for UK citizens and I think most of the rest of the world are valid for three months, but once you are in are only valid for thirty days. Make a note of where it is in your passport, as you will need to show it a lot and they don't like to wait around while you faff with the pages.
So I think I covered everything visa wise. Now for your research and decisions on where you want to go and how you expect to travel there. China is massive! So ridiculously massive that train journeys can take weeks. But never fear, Air China do cheap internal flights, though they do sometimes cancel them or change the times. I wouldn't advise driving, unless you really don't value your life, and taxis and subway fares are so cheap that shorter journeys can be easily done even on a strict budget.
If you are travelling off the beaten path, then personal guides may be necessary and could be quite costly. There are also options of guided tours with a group, which I'm sure can be arranged with a travel agent or online.....I have never done this myself. But if you want to just explore, yourselves, and make the most of your time over there, with the flexibility to create your own itinerary and change it as and when needed, then here are some survival tips:
Research where you want to go. There are plenty of sites to help you make your decisions. Obviously speaking or reading Mandarin would help you no end as you will find the most in depth information in Chinese, but this is unlikely for most tourists.
http://www.cnto.org/ This is great for English speaking users.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/tourism/ This is also a great comprehensive guide to all things China.
Apologies these are both for English speakers but wherever you are in the world, if you google or bing or search for Chinese Tourism then you will pull up the pages for your country.
Now, speaking of google, it was essential for us at times, because whilst it is rarely used in China - as they have their own search engines - it still has a ridiculous amount of information, such as bus times, travel information and maps. A smart phone is a useful tool to have over there but your data roaming is likely to cost a small fortune. There are some free wifi spots available but you can't really rely on it. If you have access to a techy person, as I am lucky enough to have, then they might suggest a small mifi device which creates a wifi network that you can access with the data provided by a sim card. Now the only problem is that in order to have a Chinese compatible sim card, you need to be registered with the Chinese government, which you would have to do once in China. If you do however, buy one online at ebay like we did, they will block your sim after four days as it is unregistered. We then had to go buy a sim and register which took the best part of an hour.
If this is sounding like way too much of a ball ache then don't worry, I agree. But it was invaluable to us at certain times. Saying that though, everywhere we stayed had wifi in the rooms or at least in the communal areas, so you can check out stuff in your accommodation.
Absolutely essential, is a guide book, of some description, preferably with all the sites written in Chinese characters, because you never know when a phone will malfunction, or the battery will die. And, they usually come with various maps and useful information. Don't buy buy a guide that doesn't have translations in Chinese Characters because it will be useless if you want to ask directions or tell a taxi driver where you want to go. If you have the characters there, all you have to do is point to them and they will help you. Most people will understand nothing except Chinese so the easier you can make it for them, the easier you make it for yourself.
There are a couple of amazing apps available for tourists with menus translated and things explained from a person actually living and working in China. We used these loads, especially in Beijing and found some top restaurants and tips for the city. Both are available on IOS (any apple product) but those of you with android may be able to find something similar. Apologies, I don't even have a smart phone, so I can't comment further - I know I live in the dark ages.
China Explorer is a free app, recently updated and compatible with IOS 4.3 or later. It is available at the itunes store. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/china-explorer-a-travel-guide/id490161062?mt=8
Beijing on a Budget is exactly what it says. It's about doing Beijing without bankrupting yourself and it is really great. Another free app, this gives you insight from someone who lives and works in the City; the best places to stay, eat, drink and visit. This app was invaluable. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beijing-on-a-budget/id440431617?mt=8
Now to currency. We were under the delusion that you couldn't get currency until you were over in China. We later found out that you could but the rates in the UK weren't great. So we decided to wait. I would advise to get some of your currency changed before you go, or to look around for some deals if exchanging a large amount of currency because if you do it at the airport, even in China they charge you about £6/60 RMB. In order to get the best rates whilst in China, you should go to the Bank of China where they will exchange your money and in certain branches can guarantee an English speaking person on the counter, but not everywhere. It is a lengthy process. So if you want speed and don't mind the transaction fee you could do an airport exchange, or you could just change it all before you go for peace of mind and knowing that you don't have to waste any time out of your holiday.
Now, with all these things in mind, your itinerary set, hotels booked and a number of days/weeks to explore, it's time to delve in to China. China seems a world apart for most people outside of it, a secret well hidden, and outsiders only ever get a glimpse of that world, the glimpse they want you to see. Visiting China was an eye opener to this other world and a huge one at that. The customs, the culture, the language, the sheer volume of people and traffic, the food, the beauty, the architecture; whilst often alien, was also bold, at times archaic, sometimes boisterous and rude, and sometimes utterly charming. It's not just a holiday, it's an experience.
Wow, I realise I just sounded like one of those tacky travel adverts but it's true. This is unlikely to be a relaxing chilled out holiday, it's about exploration; it's about being the odd one out; it's about not fully understanding what is happening and it's about history and cultural significances that may never have crossed your mind before. Above all it's a learning holiday.
China is a place often passed on due to the language barrier or the cost of a flight or being far away or being too different for westerners. But I can assure you that I only knew how to say hello in Mandarin and I got by - granted, with the help of my travel buddy, our guide books, apps, google and decent research. But don't rule it out. If you are on a budget, as we were, then China is a fabulous destination. Food, accommodation and travel are so cheap once you're there; you won't believe what you get for your money. And in terms of seeing something really different, surprising and truly memorable, you would struggle to top China.
So, join me next time when I'll be giving you a survival guide to Beijing; covering toilets, public transport, pedestrian crossings, traffic, electric bikes and much much more.
Until then.......
The Sarky Traveller
