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<title>Traveling Through China in November 1995</title>

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<h2 align="center"><img src="images/chi_ban.GIF"

alt="Traveling Through China" width="375" height="53"></h2>

<h2 align="center"><img src="images/mao1.jpg"

alt="The Forbidden City" width="338" height="148"></h2>

<p align="left">In November 1995, my husband and I spent three wonderful

weeks traveling on our own through China. I'm putting this page

on the web to share our experiences and hopefully dispel any

fears anyone may have about traveling to China on their own. Not

to say that tours aren't great, but sometimes you just can't get

the right tour, to the right place, at the right time. </p>

<p align="left">After this page or so of text with a little

introduction information, I've set up different pages for

different cities/sites with a few pictures; as well with a page

about some of the basics of traveling in China that may be

helpful to someone planning such a trip.</p>

<p>It was the trip of a life time. My husband is 1/2 Chinese,

although he doesn't speak the language (his Dad was the youngest

of 12 kids born in Hawaii) and had never been to Asia except for

a few visits to Hong Kong while in the navy 27 years ago. All

this time he's longed to visit the home of his paternal

ancestors. But like so many of us, he got busy living and

working. Finally, he had an opportunity to travel to Asia on

business. He immediately told me to plan to meet him there when

he finished his business. Believe me, I didn't need any arm

twisting to do it. I mean, what an experience! </p>

<p>His business travel was to take two weeks and end in the

middle of November. There was no time to try to take a planned

tour like so many said we needed to do. We had two months to plan

the trip, and most of the organized tours ended in October

anyway. But we were not daunted. We're relatively young (forties)

and looked forward to the challenge of navigating our way through

a foreign country. I wouldn't recommend it to senior citizens or

families traveling with children, but we managed just fine.</p>

<p>Of course, we needed to get visas right away. And since we

were also planning to go to Hong Kong we needed multiple entry

visas, since we would have to go back to China to fly home. I was

traveling on a free frequent flyer ticket and they only let you

make one additional stop; and we were planning to stop in Hawaii

on our way back. But it's very easy to get a Chinese visa in Hong

Kong anyway. My husband needed to get one (he had already been in

and out of China once on business, so this would be his third

entry), and we were able to have the hotel (Marriot) concierge

take care of it for us. We also got all appropriate shots and

pills recommended for traveling to China.</p>

<p>I spent a lot of time going through all the travel books (and

reading what I could on the Internet - some peoples China travel

experiences were very helpful), and made a tentative schedule of

how we would spend our three weeks seeing China. One of the key

things we wanted to do was take a cruise down the Yangzi river.

But the only advance reservations I made were for our first three

nights in Beijing, at the Holiday Inn Crown Plaza, which was only

a few blocks from the Forbidden City. The rest I planned to make

as we went along. </p>

<p>I knew, from all the travel books, that there were all the

nice American hotels (Sheraton, Hyatt, Holiday Inn, etc.)

throughout most of China. That was what made us so comfortable

about doing this trip on our own. And since we were going in the

off-off season, we knew we wouldn't have trouble getting

reservations. I also knew that the Chinese government ran a

nation wide tourist bureau that had offices in every city that we

could use to help us make the rest of the reservations once

there. But we ended up not using them. We used a private travel

agency that had a desk in the Crown Plaza (our first hotel in

Beijing). It's not at all like working with a travel agency in

America, but fortunately everything worked out fine. We needed to

put a lot of trust in this one women, Cherry (the one that spoke

the best English), at this one agency . We needed to give her

tons of money (thousands, actually, via visa card), and trust

that reservations were being made in different cities, plane

tickets would be waiting for us in different hotels, people would

be in certain places at certain times to meet us, on and on.

Things aren't really computerized there. Any itineraries we got

were hand written by either Cherry or myself. </p>

<p>They booked us on the last cruise ship of the year (the river

gets too low in the winter for the cruise ships) down the Yangzi

River. It was scheduled to leave a week and a half after we

arrived in China, so everything else was to be planned around

that. Of course, we had to pay for the cruise right away. And we

got Cherry's assurances that we had the reservation, and that it

was a luxury (China's version of luxury is quite different than

ours, but that's OK) ship. That's all. No brochure. No tickets.

No confirmation numbers. Nothing. But again, things worked out

fine for us. It was the trip of a lifetime. We are looking

forward to a return trip to China.</p>

<p>Now on to the actual trip. </p>

<tr>

<td><a href="index.htm">Introduction</a></td>

<td align="center"><a href="basics.htm">Basics</a></td>

<td align="center"><a href="Beijing.htm">Beijing</a></td>

<td align="center"><a href="yangzi.htm">Yangzi River</a></td>

<td align="center"><a href="macau.htm">Macau</a></td>

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<p>Feel free to send me <a

href="mailto:webmaster@bgmm.com">Email</a> if you have

any questions or comments.</p>

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