SOuth China October 2012 2 week travel advice please

SOuth China October 2012 2 week travel advice please
Sep 6, 2012 07:05
guest51112	Hello All, Myself and my girlfriend are both in our late twenties, rather experienced backpackers, on a medium budget and looking for interesting natural and man-made destinations to experience. We both enjoy immersing ourselves with the more everyday occurances of a destination such as the locals might do, and tend to shy away from the larger more 'touristy' destinations, although obviously sometimes it's worth it... We're planning to book return flights to Hong Kong early October and have 2 weeks to zoom around South and South-Western China, perferably on trains, but perhaps using internal flights if we must. I know the distances are massive - however we recently went from Mumbai to Kolkata by train in two weeks and found it no real problem - because it's not everyday we get to be in China, and we do enjoy the feeling of moving around and experiencing more and more places. This map here: http://goo.gl/maps/ZivzN includes places we intitially think we would like to pass through, and will give some of you an idea of what we're interested in seeing. I wondered if anyone with experience in these areas / this region would have any advice for us? Any tips / suggestions otherwise are greatly appreciated as I like to know as much as I can before heading to a destination so that I can spend my time experiencing it rather than uncovering it!

Sep 6, 2012 07:05

guest51112

Hello All,

Myself and my girlfriend are both in our late twenties, rather experienced backpackers, on a medium budget and looking for interesting natural and man-made destinations to experience. We both enjoy immersing ourselves with the more everyday occurances of a destination such as the locals might do, and tend to shy away from the larger more 'touristy' destinations, although obviously sometimes it's worth it...

We're planning to book return flights to Hong Kong early October and have 2 weeks to zoom around South and South-Western China, perferably on trains, but perhaps using internal flights if we must. I know the distances are massive - however we recently went from Mumbai to Kolkata by train in two weeks and found it no real problem - because it's not everyday we get to be in China, and we do enjoy the feeling of moving around and experiencing more and more places.

This map here: http://goo.gl/maps/ZivzN includes places we intitially think we would like to pass through, and will give some of you an idea of what we're interested in seeing.

I wondered if anyone with experience in these areas / this region would have any advice for us?

Any tips / suggestions otherwise are greatly appreciated as I like to know as much as I can before heading to a destination so that I can spend my time experiencing it rather than uncovering it!

Sep 15, 2012 01:17

JABAROOTOO
Points:
Join Date: Jul 4, 2005
Status: Offline

Welcome to China,
Hope you are arriving after the 9th Oct otherwise you will hit peak season 1 -8th and won't even get a train ticket.
Too many place for two weeks. I've been to most of your destinations and live in Chongqing. Unless you are on a day train you won't see enough and it's a bit of a waste as the scenery is awesome. Suggest you choose to travel from HK to Chengdu or HK to Lijiang but not both. It's a two day train/bus journey from Chengdu to Lijiang alone. The train trip from Guiyang to Chongqing via Xiushan is great but need to do Tongren to CQ by day or you miss the best of it.
Flights can be cheaper than trains but of course don't see as much. Plan to take it as it comes. You might not want to move too fast when you see what there is. In fact the trip from HK to Guiyang stopping off on the way would be enough to when your appetites fro more. Guangxi is a great place to explore Read my reviews on places you are visiting. do you belong to couchsurfers? Could help out with accom.
Have fun stay safe.

Post a Reply to: SOuth China October 2012 2 week travel advice please