I am going to China on June 1 for 10 days and am looking for advise on how best to book hotels and tours. Is it best to book hotels and then book tours upon arrival or should all be done in advance? I will be in Beijing and Shanghai. Has any one heard good things about the Peace Hotel or Ruijin Guesthousein Shanghai?
Reply to this Hi Dale:
I don't know about Shaghai, but we stayed at the Best Western in Beijing and I would recommend it. In some places in Beijing it can be difficult to communicate so we chose a place where we figured communication would be easy. It was, for the most part. Best though to book on-line rather than phone directly to the front desk as I did. There is a person with a little office in the lobby who books tours for you - and her English is good. You can do that once you arrive. The prices, while not the bargain they used to be, are not unreasonable. Make sure you don't get taken by unscrupulous taxi drivers from the airport - Beijing especially is notorious for that. You should be paying less than $20 US for a trip from the airport to virtually anywhere in Beijing.
Good luck.
Reply to this i'd been to Shanghai 2 year ago. The location of Peace Hotel is at the River bank while RuiJin Guesthouse is a villa-like hotel. Both are very nice. The Peace Hotel is more convenient in terms of location and has a good view along the River. ^___^
Reply to this Indeed, it is not easy to communicate in China when booking a hotel. But I recommended you a good place where you can book you hotel easily. I just come from the Badaling Great Wall, located in Beijing, China. It is an interesting trip.
Reply to this We booked all our hotel reservations online, and had no problems whatsoever. We stayed in 3 different hotels in Beijing when we were there. 2 were closer to the shopping (Wang Fu Jing) and Tiananmen Square, and the other was a bit further out but we used the very inexpensive bus system to get to the subway hubs. The subway system is very good and easy to use.
Language is a bit of an obstacle but not something that should keep you from having fun and seeing things. We didn't use any organized English speaking tour groups and we went to two different areas of the Great Wall, and checked out a number of things in town. The Badaling-Ming Tombs tour is a Chinese speaking tour that you can catch pretty much everyday in the Tiananmen Square area. It is not very expensive and you climb the wall in two different places, and stop for lunch (which you have to pay for). The Ming Tombs part of it was not as good as I expected but it was still interesting. The second bus we took to the wall near Simatai had to be organized through a particular hotel in Beijing (can't remember it off the top of my head but it was in our Lonely Planet book and can probably be found online). That was an all day tour as well. Both trips to the wall take all day (the wall is not located in Beijing so you drive quite a ways to get to the individual segments open to tourists). You will notice right off that most of the tourists in Beijing are Chinese so most of the stuff is geared towards them. That was fine with us because we usually hate organized tour groups.
You will encounter lots of art students who speak English well that wish for you to look at (and hopefully buy) their art. We checked one out when we were in the Forbidden City but mostly told them we weren't interested. There is a bit of begging (sometimes aggressive) in Beijing when you are in the tourist areas but it isn't so bad as to ruin a trip. You might encounter a person when you first get off your flight that wants to help you get your bags, get your money and get to town. They usually take you to a hotel that gives them a bonus for bringing people there, but you can tell them that you already have reservations and don't need help and they will leave you alone. Definitely change some money at the airport because everything is paid in Chinese money and finding places to cash traveler's checks (if you aren't in a tourist area) can be hard. The ATMs with visa and mastercard symbols worked for us to take out Chinese money with no problems.
We didn't get up to Shanghai on our trip (although we would have loved to) so sorry this is only about Beijing and the outlying area. There are quite a few amazing temples and places to see in Beijing, besides the obvious (Tiananmen Square, and Forbidden City). The Temple of Heaven, and Summer Palace are just a few of them.
Hope this helps.
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