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Thread: 2-3 week china visit
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[quote=AIKO2 ,2581]My adviuce would be that you make up your mind as to where to visit PRIOR to arriving, then stick to it! Three weeks is a terribly short time; I spent a whole month in KUNMING, and never tired of it! BUt then again, to each what they crave the most. Kunming wouldn't attract historical site hunters that much. The distances are enormous, and buying train tickets will involve quite a bit of legwork and inordinate amounts of patience! Count on being stranded for a couple of days in each place you put on your itinerary, due to non-availability of tickets! This is especially to be reckoned with in touristy destinations such as Xi'an and Guilin. Also: how are you going to travel? Are you willing to take the train? Choose hard-sleeper, if you want to get a maximum value for your foreign dollars: it's confortable enough, airconditioned, nonsmoking, yet you are among fellow travellers from the country you travel in. In soft sleeper compartments, you are the four of you in one compartment, and Chinese who can afford this kind of accom are usually a bit 'blase', as you can well imagine! Avoid airlines! Your first leg - from Peking to Xi'an would take approx. two days. It's a leisurely way of seeing northern China and its loess landscapes, grasslands, mountains and some industrial centres. If you want to visit a historically-relevant spot, plan on stopping over at LUOYANG, where one of China's first urban centres was built (though you won't see much of it, but it's kind of interresting). In Xi'an, you should spend more thantwo days. Visit HUANGSHAN, 2120 kms away, scenic mountains. Take a peek at Banpo village, 20 kms from Xi'an; you have heard of its terracotta warriors. Don't buy from those hawkers there! Xi'an itself is a world away from "modern" China - the old wall is still there, palaces and temples are intact; museums galore, and worth a visit! There are lots of Muslims - enjoy their food! I personally suggest a trip to nearby An'kang, some 300 kms to the south, past mountains, spread out on the bank of a small river that some 30 years ago swallowed the old town, hence a new wall had to be erected. The town itself is - or was, when I visited it - rather traditional, with lots of mosques too. There is a train station; trains come from Luoyang and go to Sichuan province. A bus ride from Xi'an is shorter, but still takes some 6 hours (unless the road has been improved dramatically). Between Xi'an and Guilin is Jiuzhaigou; you need to take the train to Chengdu first. Plan on spending a couple of days in charming Chengdu! A tremendously interesting city full of local colours, yet decidedly modernist. I don't know whether it's a good idea to visit Jiuzhaigou - in summer, it is horribly crowded, and in autumn it gets pretty old very quickly, and snowstorms come again. It's not a little dangerous too! [/quote]
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