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Facing south on Qianmen Street
Get here early!
Bedroom at Days Inn
Bicycle taxi in Beijing
hello,
I have a question about obtaining traintickets from beijing to shanghai and back.
Our plan is to take train d29 (fast daytrain) on 4 sept 2010 to shanghai and take train t104 (slow nighttrain) back on 5 sept 2010.
1) What's best way to get those tickets, cause pre-selling only starts 10-20 days in advance and we are travelling at that moment and not able to arrange tickets.
2)Is it a good idea to make a reservation for the ticket by an office who can post them to the hotel in beijing or can we just buy them at the day we depart (risk of solding out??????)
3) Can we get the retourticket in Beijing or do we have to buy it in Shanghai
Thx for your time
Eric (Netherlands)
I let my hostel take care of the reservation for me, for the leg Beijing - Shanghai (I booked it for the next day's departure on their night train) and upon arrival, I went to the ticket office in Shanghai and bought tickets for the next day train Shanghai - Beijing. You can read about my experiences on my Beijing and Shanghai pages, transportation section.
thx for the information.
Iam especiallhy asking this because at the time we travel, there is also the world expo, thus it might be more crowded in the train and we don't want to get in trouble obtaining tickets, cause at that moment we are on a tight schedule.
You're absolutely right, I forgot about the expo.
My difficulty about buying the train tickets from home is that I couldn't find a service that I considered reliable enough to leave my credit card information with, but when I was there it was off season. Have you contacted your hotel asking if they can help you out with this?
I might be able to help you out with the train tickets. Or have you already found someone to do them for you?
Contact me via VTMail or email if necessary -- ellyse99@yahoo.com and put "VirtualTourist" and your own username in the subject line.
I really loved the architecture of the buildings and temples.
All the buildings inside the Forbidden City just looked great (except for the ones which were surrounded with scaffoldings).
Same for the temples inside the big Lama temple complex (Yonghegong).
Al these temples were beautifully decorated with fine wooden sculptures.
If you have a camera with a tele lens then you can make beautiful detailed pictures on these colourful decorations. the architecture
Located in Haidian District, the Summer Palace is a classical imperial garden embracing hills and lakes. This was the place where the imperial families of the Qing Dynasty came for relaxation and spent their summer.
There are over 3,000 different points of interest located among the vast lake and hills.
You might want to bring pants that either have drawstrings on the bottom so they can be rolled up and stay that way or zip-off bottoms (they become shorts), some bathrooms are really, really nasty and you'll want to make sure the bottoms of your pants don't fall down.
Bring an umbrella or buy one there to block out the sun (many Chinese do this) as well as for rain. Sunglasses are important too.
Bring good walking/hiking shoes; don't plan on buying them there - I couldn't find shoes that fit nor could any other westerner I knew there.
Also, some kind of bandana or scarf for the dust storms is good to have. I had a really hard time finding band-aids there, so bring those and some neosporin.
Diarrhea medicine is a must - I don't know anyone there who didn't get at least one serious bout of something. I don't know that they sell it there so bring your own, and lots of it. Same thing for antacid.
Pain relievers and cough medicines are better brought from home - I just trust things better whose labels I can read. Be careful of some cold medicines though, some places (like Japan) consider Sudafed a narcotic and you can get it trouble - I didn't want to risk it coming to China. APS film (advantix) is really hard to find, so bring your own. Kodak is everywhere but you don't always know how long it's been sitting out or if it's real or counterfeit so buy it from the Kodak places, not the street stands.
Digital cameras are fun - many Chinese have never seen them and since they love to see pictures of themselves, they love the fact that they can see the results immediately - it's a great conversation starter when they see you shooting with one.
Bring extra lenses for an SLR camera. I shattered one (still hurts to say) for one of my Pentaxes and couldn't find a good replacment. Also it's a good idea to bring a glare shield, a polarizer and a yellow filter to cut some of the haze there. Obviously any toys you can bring you should - it's a great place to take pictures. Don't bring white clothes - they will get really dingy from the horrible air quality.
Bring batteries, especially if you're going to want music on long train rides. Chinese brands last maybe 2 hours for a Discman, and the Energizer and Duracell are sometimes knockoffs and sometimes pre-used I think so they're not always reliable.
Bring pictures from home to show Chinese friends - they want to see how you live. It's nice to have gifts on hand as well - I brought some baseball hats (wouldn't recommend it, I don't think they'll get worn) and picture books of US national parks and cities and my state.
Bring things like journals and notebooks and paper from home - paper quality is often really bad there and notebooks are strange - odd little badly translated expressions in English written all over them and stuff like that.
DON'T bring a bike - bikes there are about $10 tops so anything more valuable than that (which yours would be) would find itself stolen in about 3 minutes.
Here you can buy anything and everything you need. Just remember to bargain a LOT. they will start at 500 and close at 20 .But smile all the time and remember,for you it may be only a few yuan, but for them it is a livelihood.
shop till you drop.
its not like what the name may suggest back home...its one of the bigger and popular bars on bar street...locals and foreigners mingle freely...if you wanna be close to the stage then better get there no less than 8 or 9 pm however...if the band is singing a well known song then everyone follows along so you won't miss much...the song list varies from soft rock to ballads to rock to folk...the wait staff is always less than 5 feet away so you'll never have to worry about running out something to drink...ladies selling cigars to cigarettes and even flowers for the ladies walk up and down the isles...the flower ladies are especially aggressive but eventually they'll leave you alone...its just a great place to just go and talk with you friends while listening to some great music...it has a very friendly and lively atmosphere...kinda loud so you won't be able to hear anyone more than 10 feet away but the bands are so good that you want really care... no dress code...
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